Aussie Nomad - a Year in Mongolia

Mercy Corps Videos

2012-02-02T12:29:00.000+08:00

These videos were made in Arkhangai province at the end of last year.

There's a bakery that hired new employees with support from a Mercy Corps SSN grant.

A carpenter who received a Mongol Rally funded grant:

A sewing business that started with a Mongol Rally grant after the group members met at the life skills training from the SSN project:

A feltmaker who expanded his business from just making the ger felt coverings to making new kinds of small items like socks:

And a massage group that provides treatment for people with disabilities, while employing people with a disability as therapists too:

Epically Epic Adventure: Day 1

2012-01-31T17:36:00.001+08:00

I tend to overuse the word epic. So when something that is genuinely epic comes along, it is tough to beat the descriptions I've used for something that was pretty cool - but not epic(after all)!

Today is the first day of 14 days straight traveling in three of the 4 western provinces of Mongolia. My traveling colleague drew the short straw: traveling for two weeks, in the coldest part of winter, to the coldest provinces!

I, on the other hand, feel like I've won the lottery being able to come along. The trip is with the animal health officer, of a technical agricultural project I haven't had much to do with. The project struggles to communicate the amazing things they're doing due to being fairly technical, and the staff being fairly technical too.

So today I was up at 4.30am to catch a 7am flight. I was expecting one of our drivers to take me to the airport, but instead had a call from a taxi driver clearly not expecting a non-mongolian speaker. I rushed downstairs only to have him drive off as I got outside the door. I chased after him and got his attention...the next challenge was telling him where to go. I should know the word for airport..but expecting a work driver who had been briefed on the details, my brain wasn't in Mongolian speaking mode...so I named a few of the Mongolian airlines, and we were heading the right direction.

About 3km out from the airport, in a kind of no-man's land, in low negative thirties and pitch black and smoky from pollution, the car just stops. He wasn't out of petrol, but it was that kind of feeling where the car just comes to a gradual stop. The driver did what he could for about 15 minutes, with no luck. Then there was 15 minutes of unsuccessful hailing down a passing car before we eventually got a ride to the airport. Good thing I left ridiculously early!

After that everything has been great! At the airport the check-in lady was the neice of my traveling colleague, they hadn't seen each other for at least 10 years! Then, behind us was my colleague's old english teachers - who she hadn't seen for at least 8 years! Now they are living in our first-stop province - Gobi Altai. When we arrived their Australian friend was there to meet them - so another nice friend was made!

Arriving at the Mercy Corps office i discovered the local program officer has fantastic english...something she had never revealed before. And she is a cool person. We interviewed a few beneficiaries and put in place plans to see some more tomorrow. And some other work stuff went on, but now I'm too exhausted to get into the details! More on that tomorrow!

Social Safety Nets Concert Highlights

2012-01-27T17:15:00.000+08:00

At the end of December the big Social Safety Nets project came to a close. Closing Forums were organised in each of the target provinces, ending in concerts with performances by the project participants.

This is a video of highlights from these concerts by Mercy Corps' Social Safety Nets participants - people who were living in poverty, isolation and desperation at the start of last year: now eager to perform in public!

The little boy is my favourite!

Mercy Corps Stories

2012-01-16T10:18:00.000+08:00

On a recent trip to Arkhangai province in rural Mongolia I took along a documentary-maker friend who filmed some of the Mercy Corps

Carpenter:

Bakery:

Sewing Group:

Chingii

2012-01-11T10:00:00.000+08:00

Mongolians are very proud of their ancient leader, Chinggis Khan. In the rest of the world this bloke is known as Ghenghis Khan, a ruthless barbarian. In Mongolia Chinggis is revered - the truth of his great feats lies somewhere in the middle - he was very intelligent, a smart leader but also killed alot of people and conquered alot of land.

I'm not going to go into the details of history - wikipedia can help you out with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan

Instead I am going to document some of the present incarnations of the man - or 'the many Chingii of Mongolia'

1. Chinggis Khan International Airport.

2. Chinggis Hotel. One of the swankiest in town.

3. Chinggis Vodka.

There are lots and lots of products with the name Chinggis, ranging from about $2 to $100 a bottle.

4. The Chinggis statue

5. Chinggis carpets. These adorn at least 80% of gers.

Countless, literally hundreds, of restaurants and bars across Ulaanbaatar and in the countryside are named in his honour. Every provinces has a local museum, every one of these featuring the local connection to Chinggis: Chinggis' birthplace, Chinggis' mother's birthplace, where Chinggis grew up, where Chinggis once drank some water...and so on.

Weekend Getaway: The Desert

2012-01-09T20:08:00.000+08:00

Last weekend I set off for the gobi by train with 4 friends. We spent all day Saturday on the train, then had 24 hours around Sainshand, then Sunday night on the train to get back in time for work. The scenerey was stunning. The desert was amazing: especially in winter. Snow covered sand dunes...just breathtaking!

Close to the city where the train stopped is one of the three major buddhist sites for Mongolians. Called the "energy centre", the site was home to a special monk a few hundred years ago. It is believed he could transport himself from Mongolia to Tibet in the blink of an eye. More tangible signs of his skills are left in his poems and dramatic works. He predicted his death three years early and it came to pass as he had said - he told his followers they could access his spirit forever from the site of the energy centre.

The platform in Choir, the main stop halfway (5 hours) between UB and Sainshand.

Our spread: 1kg of Doritos, Mongolian Sushi, Meatballs and tomato and vegie sauce, Yak Cheese (Yummmm, but super strong smelling), boiled eggs...

Breast rocks. Brings fertility for women...

The 5th biggest stupa in the world. Finished in September last year: brand new, super fancy. Huge inside. Dedicated to the dramatic monk.

THE energy centre - sitting on the ground, exposing your hands to the sun to absorb the energy. The effect on us foreigners was unanimously to feel extremely cold.

A giant-bell in the middle of the desert. There was a circle of stupas (the white statues) about 50-100m apart dotted from the monastery to the bell to the energy centre, to some caves.

Ring the bell three times for good fortune. My advice: take in the amazing view of nothing that is the desert and get your fill of inspiration.

Our slightly short driver (super friendly guy) with one of the giant-like german journeymen!

A novelty for the weekend was our accidental travel companions. Four german-speaking "journeyman": carpenters spending three years and one day traveling the world following the completion of the apprenticeships to learn skills and share skills, upholding an 800 year tradition. Super cool! They have to wear their traditional uniform, including hat - they carry two sets, one to work in and one to travel in. This rule extends even to super cold climates, like Mongolia: no adding a big coat or beanie or boots...so they were freaking cold. Wikipedia info here

Climbing this mountain in the middle of the flat desert. Men can go to the top, women only half way.

Me as high as women can go. The view from here was stunning enough.

Camels in the desert! With snow! Just amazing.

I do work, sometimes, honest.

2012-01-03T17:34:00.000+08:00

Despite the appearance the tales on my blog might give (and they're only half the story I get around to writing up) I do, at times, do a lot of work.

The piece below is an example of one such occasion. This was a Friday night, Saturday morning effort, in the few hours before we took off for a week out west. I was given the task around 3pm on Friday afternoon, and leaving for the trip Saturday at 10am-ish.

The task was an entry into MC's innovation contest - calling for examples of innovations from MC offices around the world. The final version looked very different to this one after all kinds of miscommunications and what-nots, but I was obliviously enjoying being bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd in Bayan Ulgii at that point.

At any rate, it is a nice write up, slightly formal, of a really cool project MC Mongolia implemented in 2011. The project has inspired a few new proposals and is promoting a similar approach among other NGOs in the Mong.

Teaching Herders to Fish

Describe the problem that you were trying to solveThe combined effects of the 2009-2010 dzud weather event, coinciding with the full brunt of the global financial crisis reaching rural Mongolia, resulted in large numbers of formerly nomadic herding families being forced to relocate to rural urban centers. Due to these rapid changes in their lives, signs of distress were common, with alarmingly high incidents of depression, alcohol dependence, domestic violence and suicide hastening the necessity of addressing this crisis. These psychological and social implications were compounded by a lack of employable skills together with a lack of employment opportunities due to the global financial crisis.

By May 2010, 20% of all livestock across Mongolia, or 8.2 million animals, had become victims of the severe weather event locals call dzud. The dzud is result of an extremely dry summer, followed by an extremely cold winter with unusually high snowfall. For many families across rural Mongolia these losses amounted to their entire herds. No longer able to continue the lifestyle they knew, larger numbers of formerly nomadic families relocated their gers (portable nomadic dwelling) to rural urban centers. Families used to endless steppe encircling all sides of their round dwelling were suddenly surrounded by a fence, then beyond that they were enclosed by thousands of other people, buildings, roads and cars with barely a goat, sheep or horse in sight.

With no employable skills, and few jobs available anyway former herders had no way to support their families. Living in the poorest edges of town, these families struggled to form productive communities, instead being held together by their lack of skills, their lack of employment and mostly, their lack of hope.

What is the innovation? Actions/ActivitiesOur response to this unprecedented combination of events was underpinned by the proverb:Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.Past programs by government and civil society organizations, ourselves included, focused on meeting the critical need in the situation – unemployed people need jobs. The problem with this approach in practice was that, for various reasons, even when we did all we could to place an unemployed person in a job there was almost no sustainability – after a few weeks many simply didn’t turn up to work, and those who did lacked motivation to obtain new skills and contribute to their workplaces. With this past experience in mind, we were determined to address the root cause of the issue, and in doing so found ourselves ‘teaching herders to fish’.

Our solutions was to deliver a pioneering approach in Mongolia that would meet not just marginal household's critical economic needs through employment, but would primarily address the root cause of their psychological and social issues and empower individuals to take responsibility for bettering their life situation through the delivery of Psycho-Social Support (PSS) training, accompanied by enabling services including kindergartens, vocational skills training and labor market days. This new technique has delivered greater impact and deeper insight into the best practices for meeting the needs of communities.

Describe the actions and activities that were undertakenGiven the lack of ocean and relatively few bodies of water we did not, in fact, find ourselves literally teaching herders to fish. We did however find ourselves teaching herders to sing, dance, draw, act out skits, play team sports and take part in public speaking. We also taught them important life-skills and coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and emotions, the importance of personal goal setting and the value of social bonds and communities. These were key parts of the PSS curriculum we delivered, in partnership with the “Mongol Household” psychotherapy association, via eight trainers in each of 10 provinces, especially trained to deliver the course for two, two-hour session each week to eight groups of 20 participants in each province – making a total of 1,600 participants.

Alongside the PSS training, specific employment support activities were implemented as part of the program. These included vocational skills training for over 4000 individuals. By improving their marketable skills, our objective was to ensure these participants would be more likely to find long term, sustainable and fulfilling employment. Labor market days were organized to bring together job seekers and employers, while an Employer Support Mechanism provided incentives to local employers to sustainably expand their business and hire extra employees.

An additional key activity was to establish kindergartens in the neighborhoods of our target group. These neighborhoods are on the fringes of rural urban centers, where poverty is rife and most children have no access to pre-school education. Establishing these kindergartens created the opportunity for children in these families to learn social skills, gain knowledge about hygiene and healthy eating – and most importantly, it kept them occupied in a safe environment while their parents participated in the PSS training or related employment support activities.

How do you know that it worked (or didn’t work)?The PSS training has proved a phenomenally effective. By targeting the underlying psychological and social issues common among unemployed, individuals were empowered to seek out employment opportunities for themselves, while becoming active members of their communities, engaged in local decision-making.

When we visit project participants we are blown away by the seemingly endless stream of outgoing, confident participants eager to share how the PSS training has changed their lives. Many tell of the close friendships they have now formed with others in their class. Many now have full-time jobs, making use of their newly obtained vocational skills. Meanwhile others have taken matters into their own hands and formed their own small businesses. Before participating in the Psycho-Social Support training, these individuals lacked the self-confidence to so much as apply for a job - let alone the energy and commitment to actively start their own business.

And the statistics backup our participant's stories. One in two PSS training participants are now employed. Following a survey of PSS participants after the training, 97% responded that they have experienced a positive change in themselves. The project aimed to create 700 new jobs. To date 1401 individuals have found permanent employment - a success rate of 200%! The capacity of attendees for the PSS training sessions was 1600. At its peak 1642 people participated in the training sessions, a result of participants encouraging their partners and friends to come along.

But most importantly of all, our efforts to ensure these activities are sustainable have been a success. A focus on tri-partite partnerships from the beginning of the project has ensured shared ownership of initiatives. Local government in eight of the ten provinces will continue to operate the kindergartens established under the project. One small, but significant, example of the impact of the PSS training in communities can be seen in local job advertisements. Employers are now actively asking for Mercy Corps' PSS training graduates to fill their vacant positions.

What would you recommend to do differently in the future? Analysis of Experience: Outcomes and LearningOne improvement we would make in the future is the duration of the training period. Based on scientific research, the Psycho-Social Support training was delivered over a six-month period. In practice we found that maintaining regular attendance over such a long period of time proved very challenging. We also observed that over just three months a significant change was evident in participants. In the future we would recommend condensing the training period to just three months and not holding the training over summer, when there are greatly increased seasonal employment opportunities in rural Mongolia.

Other than this improvement, the inclusion of the Psycho-Social Support training has proved highly effective. Our team have seen the reality of Mercy Corps vision for change in action with strong government, private and civil society participation leading to sustainable change in very real ways for individuals, families and communities across rural Mongolia. With relevant cultural adjustments we highly recommend this approach when implementing employment support programs and we can see its potential in a range of other contexts. We hope to include elements of the PSS training in future programs in Mongolia.

Christmas in Mongolia

2011-12-28T20:43:00.000+08:00

Phew. The Christmas season in Ulaanbaatar has been surprisingly festive, and very busy.

On the musical side, the most popular song of the season is by far this annoying ditty by Abba. The "Happy New Year" part of the chorus must also be topping the ringtone charts, if my colleague's phones are anything to go by.

Around the start of December "New Year Trees" started popping up in front of the big stores, then in front of the bigger buildings, and then a huge one in the main square! "New Year" decorations, almost exactly the same as our christmas decorations, with the notable exception of anything christian, are everywhere.

Almost everything is exactly the same, but called "new year such and such" rather than "christmas such and such".

The undoubted highlight of the new year season is the work new year party. There is huge pressure on every female to be dressed to their absolute best for this occasion. In the early weeks of December office talk is dominated by what dress you are going to where, how you are going to do your hair and so on. It was made clear that anything other than a dress and some makeup would be totally unacceptable on my part, so I went with it and did my best to get into the festive spirit. The terrible task of shopping for a dress, in a foreign country where women are 90% the size of sticks and shop assistants are the opposite of helpful was put off a few times - until the Sunday before the party, the last possible day to find the dress. An awesome friend with great taste came along to help me out. Miraculously we found two dresses and couldn't pick between the two. Figuring I would not want to go dress shopping again for another 24 years I decided to get both.

Me with my team at the work party. Half these guys finished their contracts two days later :(

The two dress scenario worked out perfectly as the night after my epic work party was a fancy party for the aussie volunteers in town - so I ended up wearing a dress two nights in a row!

Me and some of the aussie volunteer crew.

What's left of my intake. Intake 30 started as 6 + one partner. Now we are two down, another has finished her assignment but staying around and it won't be long until the next one leaves. Farewells are the curse of the AYAD adventure.

These two parties were in the week before Christmas. Three days of this week were spent at work conference - around 100 staff, including all the guys who work in the field offices around the countryside, were bought together for various strategic discussions and updates etc. This was a good chance to evaluate how my assignment can fit in, meet some of the english speaking field staff and suss out some good provinces to try and get myself to in my last 14 weeks!!!!

So three days of conference, two bit parties, then Friday night was a latish night farewelling my colleagues whose contracts finished up...notably the team leader who had been at MCM for about 6 years. Although most of the conversation was in Mongolian it was a really pleasant night.

Which brings us to Christmas eve. My intake and our housemates had a late lunch at one of the fancier cafes in town, newly opened and exchanged secret santa gifts. We then moved to the ballet theatre to watch the aptly scheduled Nutcracker.

This was followed by mulled wine at one of the aussie's homes and then some essential ice-cream + ovaltine + christmas movies in a smaller group - Home Alone 2. Christmas day was going to bed super late after skyping home early in the morning before tales had to leave for work, sleeping in, rushing to church with some other volunteers then back home to get ready for a big lunch at my apartment. The invite said to start at 3pm.

This was taken pretty liberally by some and we didn't start eating until almost 6, but boy what a feast! A former chef prepared the most delicious roast beef and juus - the result of 6 months stock-collecting; there was mac and cheese, vegies, salad, bolognese, bruschetta and more...dessert featured a trifle, cakes and ice cream. Starts had included tasmanian cheese and pizza shapes smuggled in!

It was a beautiful meal with lots of friends - about 50 people over the course of the afternoon crammed into our apartment to share the day together. The night finished off with an essential Love Actually viewing and finally some sleep.

This was after spending two weeks out of three during december in the countryside. So a busy time...perhaps for the best, keeping busy helps you forget to remember what you're missing out on back home!

This week I am on holiday, although so far its been busy with cleaning and errands. Tomorrow I am off to Khentii - to a region close to the russian border (we needed to get border permits) where Chinggis Khan (Gengis) is believed to have been born. Today it is a region with buriat people - an ethnic group close to Mongolians, mostly found in Russia around Chita and Ulan Ude. More on that when I get back :)

2011-12-13T09:15:00.002+08:00

One of Mercy Corps' projects brings US farmers to Mongolia for three weeks or so to share their knowledge and teach some new skills so farmers can diversify their activities.

Below is an interview with Greg Higgins who recently came to teach sausage making.

You can also check out the blog he kept while in Mongolia: Higgins in Mongolia Blog

Source:http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-18297-hotseat_greg_higgins.html

Chef Greg Higgins knows his way around a sausage. One of the forefathers of local, sustainable dining in Portland—which he has been dishing up at his eponymous downtown restaurant Higgins for almost 18 years—he was curing meat and serving up charcuterie plates when most of the city’s rock-star cooks were still in Pampers. But when aid agency Mercy Corps asked him to spend three weeks teaching sausage- and charcuterie-making to cooks in Mongolia, he didn’t know if he was up to the task. “Basically, there’s next to no pork over there,” Higgins says. “I was thinking, I’ve got an extensive background in real artisanal charcuterie—I’m not so sure how that’s going to work with the products they have.”

But to Mongolia he went, keeping an online diary for wweek.com along the way (you can read it all here). And after being regaled with Higgins’ tales of smoked camel hams, goat-meat hotdogs, battling antiquated Soviet equipment and downing large amounts of vodka for the past month, we had to sit down for a post-mortem on his travels.

WW: What were your expectations going into this project?Greg Higgins: Well, my expectations weren’t really high food-wise. Food there is OK, it’s nothing special. Very little seasoning—onion, salt, a little pepper—and the sausage tradition is really archaic, old Russian, so I didn’t feel it was going to be that hard to come up with [new] ideas.

You ended up having to substitute things like camel, yak and goat for pork in your sausages—what did they taste like?Really, really good. The reason pork is king in the world of sausage-making is that there are five categories of fat in any given pig, and those categories of fats have different applications, create different texture, etc. Within most other livestock—cow, sheep—there’s only one or two types of fat, and they don’t emulsify and don’t create the mouth feel you get out of pork fat. So that was my biggest fear: How was I going to get these fats to stay in suspension so it wasn’t that dry, drippy, grainy sausage that you don’t wanna have? But in reality there’s so much protein content, those animals are so healthy—I imagine the protein content in those animals is triple or quadruple even the pasture-raised meat I get here. So what that allowed us to do was achieve emulsions you couldn’t get with run-of-the-mill meat. So that meant the textures held and the flavors were really good…. The camel ham was absolutely delicious. Was it richer flavor? Sure, it didn’t taste like a cute little pig, but I think if you served that product here, people would love it.

Did people enjoy the new food you introduced them to?Oh yeah, I think it was pretty fun. And then some of the stuff was slapstick. The onion-ring thing [in this blog post, Higgins described making American food for his hosts], that was witch-doctor material. They were just absolutely flabbergasted by a commonplace ingredient—I went and bought some cornstarch, which is really the secret to a crispy batter. We made corn dogs and onion rings, and the locals were just ecstatic. Go figure.

And the meats? Do you think they will keep making them now that you’ve left?I’m absolutely certain the ham-curing and smoking process they’ll continue, because that’s very manageable. And in their world, they have a surplus of certain products. Fat—they don’t know what to do with all the fat. The idea that you would actually render all the fat and cook with it was radical. They have a lot of legs from goats and sheep they don’t know what to do with, ’cause it’s stronger-flavored meat, so I taught them to make hams with those and they were very excited. They have a lot of organ meat, so almost everywhere one of the requests was, “Can we put organ meat in it?”

Do you feel like ultimately you’ve achieved something?I’m sure we did. I achieved for myself, personally, learning what their challenges are, what their limitations are, and I’ve got a picture of what the potential is—I mean it’s immense, sitting on a resource like all that quality meat in that quantity…. So one of my projects is to put together a care package of products that should be available there in the form of small tools: good thermometers, simple brine injectors, the proper cure salts…. I think the tradition of the meats is so strong that I can’t see it going away. And I can only see that as people do better economically, there will be a point where it’ll differentiate—someone will make better stuff and someone will say, “Their stuff is better. Why is that better?”

The Future of Mongolia

2011-12-12T15:09:00.001+08:00

There's plenty of potential for Mongolians to achieve great things...unfortunately currently corruption and a lack of leadership are holding the country back.

Pollution is a major problem - not just in the capital Ulaanbaatar, where it ranks second in the world, but now increasingly in rural towns where populations are growing and governments buy old power stations from neighbouring countries, cause they're cheap. They're cheap for a reason!

3 Words: Michael Jackson Medley

2011-12-04T11:21:00.001+08:00

The Morin Khuur is the most famous traditional Mongolian instrument. A two stringed violin, with a carved horse shape head - the name literally means horse head fiddle. It is amazing the sounds these guys get from these two strings.

On Friday night I went to a special concert by the National Morin Khuur Ensemble. As we found our seats and turned out eyes to our programmes there was a collective gasp of excitement. Well, more staggered gasps of excitement and sharing with the person sitting next to you the finale: Michael Jackson Medley.

The concert was fantastic, probably aided by the building suspense of what this Michael Jackson medley would be! The program was a tribute to north and south american composers - a typically Mongolian stroke of randomness. Seeing the Mongolian instruments playing these familiar, and some not so familiar, but definitely foreign pieces was amazing.

At one point there was a special performance by a famous 'Pop Diva'. This woman always wears sunglasses and appears at special events...while popular among Mongolians, most foreigners get the feeling they're not quite getting the point of her presence...

And then finally it was time for the anticipated Jackson Medley - it didn't disappoint! The band were amazing, the received a rousing applause and many standing ovations - sparking an encore - in which they played the jackson medley again! This time there was a full standing ovation.

Arkhangai Province Work Trip

2011-12-03T11:13:00.000+08:00

Last week I went on a work trip with my counterpart B to Arkhangai province (or Arkhangai aimag, in Mongolian).http://mercycorps.org.mn/images/Arkhangai.gifThe province (aimag) is the highlighted area, the main city ('aimag centre') - Tsesterleg - being about 6 hours drive west of the capital, Ulaanbaatar (the black circle).

This region is famous for the best dairy products and having lots and lots of trees - a rarity in Mongolia. There was a very noticable presence of wooden buildings - homes and sheds in the countryside and oddly a lot of basketball hoops and goal posts dotted across now empty valleys - I'm guessing families must move to these locations in the summer. The aimag is well developed thanks to its proximity to UB (Ulaanbaatar). There is now paved road all the way from UB to the aimag centre - an amazing blessing.

On the way to the aimag centre we stopped in the ancient capital of Kharkhorum. There isn't much here now: grand plans of relocating the capital back here, a shiny new museum and a reconstructed temple - plus lots of tourists hoping to find more in summer, keep the economy buzzing. There are also a couple of ancient turtle rocks, and a very realistic phallic rock - popular with tourists.

The plan was to get some lunch (we had tsuivan - a mongolian noodle dish) and visit a Mongol Derby funded project. The wonder of modern technology meant that the project leader's phone couldn't be reached, so we had a brief stop at the ancient temple and continued on our journey.

Some pictures from the temple:

The next day we set off on a 4 hour drive to an isolated "soum centre" called Kharkhan - population 2000. Aimag is equivalent to a state or province, they have an "aimag centre" or largish town of population somewhere from 10,000 to 40,000. Below this the aimags/provinces are divided up into "soums" which have a "soum centre" - or town - with populations of a few thousand. Below the soum are "baghs" - or communities/villages - which will be literally a single building in the middle of nowhere where community forums are held every few months, herders come to vote and that's about it.

The project here is a felt making business. The family make the large felt covers for gers - important for insulating the gers in winter. The owner of the business makes these in summer in an old factory building. He wanted something to do in winter so applied for a grant to buy some processing equipment to make smaller felt items - specifically felt boot linings herders wear in winter.

At some stage a frozen wolf appeared. This was very very popular with the men around, including our driver. Numerous pictures were taken in all kinds of poses. Great care was taken to adjust the animals ears and get everything just right. Apparently 'chinese' will pay alot for an intact animal like this.

Day three we visited a bakery that has employed 6 new people as part of a project called Social Safety Nets addressing people displaced by natural disaster and global financial crisis. The products were delicious - a rarity in Mongolia.

This bakery is famous for making a special kind of fried big biscuit that is arranged in layers for Mongolia's lunar new year celebrations called Tsagaan Tsaar, and used at special occasions like weddings, funerals and hair cutting ceremonies (when children, particularly boys, are a certain age their hair is cut for the first time in a special family ceremony - different reports say 2 or 4 years old).

The biscuits are arranged in odd-numbered layers - even numbered layers are very bad. The layers represent different kinds of positive things- eg. happiness. Older people have more layers.

In the afternoon we visited three groups - a carpenter, a sewing cooperative and a massage centre for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Day four was time to come home. My colleague's son had become unwell and needed some kind of small surgery while we were away, so of course she was in a hurry to get back and pretty stressed out. During the day she heard that the surgery was done and all was good.

We were ready to leave at 7am - pitch black. The early start heading east was a great idea - we were driving into the sunrise which was amazingly beautiful. We stopped in Kharkhorum again, this time we were able to visit two projects - a dairy production business and a sewing group.

The dairy business purchased equipment to hygienically process and package milk to sell in their region. The owner runs a few small shops in the town and sells his milk in these outlets along with another shop he has a contract for.

He explained that there is little milk around in winter, Mongolian cows only calve in the spring - so there is lots of milk and lots competition to sell it in the summer - but its very hot and not very hygienic.

In winter herders freeze their milk to use at the lunar new year celebration (Tsaagan Tsaar) in February.

The sewing business us run by a lady called Dumaa - a very sweet, gentle lady. They make gorgeous felt items like hats, bags, boots. There is a popular felt shop in UB called Tsagaan Alt, frequented by my crowd of volunteers - we found out Dumaa sells her items to this shop.

The cooperative shares a building with the local World Vision office. I found it interesting to hear that in the summer world vision repainted the outside but since the cooperative had a sign up saying they had received a grant from a rival development agency - Mercy Corps - they didn't paint the cooperative's half of the building!

Back in the Big Smoke

2011-12-01T15:44:00.001+08:00

Ulaanbaatar isn't the prettiest city, or the biggest city, or the coolest city. It is really barely a city by world standards; but never has the term 'big smoke' more applied to a city than here. Mongolia has the honour of having the second most polluted air in the world- and not by much.

Never before has tiny Mongolia stood out so much on a world map - you'll have no trouble spotting this little country with its contrasting red on this world air pollution map The Herald put together:

Link to Map

Click on the map then hover over Mongolia for a second and you'll see that figure of 279. Hover over Australia and you'll see 13. That's quite a difference!

This is the measurement of PM10 particles - the tiny particles that lodge in your lungs and cause all kinds of health problems..many of which aren't really known yet as this air pollution is a new problem for the world, relatively speaking.

Why this whinge again?

I got back from a fantastic trip to the countryside yesterday. The pollution starts to be visible about an hour out of the city. As you hit the city you enter this big grey cloud where you can't see more than about 200 metres ahead. Then your perception changes and it seems to get better...but your eyes get a bit watery, and your throat gets a bit scratchy. And you can smell smoke everywhere - not just in bars! (And you have plenty of time to observe these reactions as you're stopped in traffic!).

The least densely populated country in the world, with the most pristine environment and a culture that relies extraordinarily on nature has (almost) the most polluted air. Who would've thought?

Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T17:34:00.001+08:00

There's been plenty of firsts during my time in Mongolia, including my first American Thanksgiving.

Our apartment played host to an epic feast of yummy food and good company. We managed to prepare a perfect turkey, a first for everyone involved, along with a heap of great savouries - 'beets' aka beetroot, carrots, vegies, salads and dessert featured an aussie style trifle alongside more traditional american pumpkin pie, and a selection of cakes and sweet things

Here's a peek at the chaos when the food was finally ready:

The spread rivaled any I've experienced before - this thanksgiving idea is a great way to kick off the festive season with some feasting and giving of thanks.

Today has a definite boxing day feel - lots of left overs to nibble on, very relaxed and sport playing on the TV - special wrestling competition to celebrate Mongolian Independance Day!

Adventures in Ulgii

2011-11-10T11:51:00.001+08:00

To make the most of our last week with my leaving housemate 4 of us aussie volunteers set off for an adventure in Mongolia’s far-west. I had been here on a work trip but didn’t get to see the big draw-cards, including climbing to a glacier at Mongolia’s highest peak – Tavan Bogd.

Sally had seen the north, the south and the east. Obviously she needed to see the west before she left. So I organised an exciting itinerary with all the things I had missed and that anyone should see when they come to Ulgii.

As it turned out we didn’t see many of those things…a dodgy van and half-frozen rivers got in the way of that.

But we had a fantastic time. This region is mostly populated by Kazakh-Mongols, famous for their hospitality. Both our arranged hosts and the families we intruded on when our car broke down didn’t disappoint in this aspect. Our impromptu visits gave a real insight into the different lives people live out here…some were very poor, some had gorgeous 2 year old children stuck inside due to winter in a house with an entire space smaller than my lounge-room back home.

We also experienced first-hand the absolute necessity of this ‘open-door’ policy – when its –20 outside you rely on some shelter to survive, and saw the social aspect of people just popping in during the day for some warm tea and a laugh in between herding animals in the snow.

Here is some of the highlights of the trip in pictures….

Stunning Views

The view from the small brick/wooden home of our hosts near Tavan Bogd:

Food

Lots of car breakdowns meant lots of visiting total strangers.

A spread similar to this is always on hand in any Mongolian home – similar to a cuppa and some biscuits at any Aussie house.

The big bowl in the middle has bread type stuff – fried in fat and fairly stale. Each person is handed a bowl of salty milk tea. You dip the bread in the tea to make it chewable, and eat along with fresh cream (bowl top left with spoon), butter (just right of the bread), cheese (the yellow strips below the butter), dried curds – the brown stuff at the bottom of the pic.

In our home-stay we were served the famous kazakh dish “Five Fingers”. The first night was delicious – the dish features meat, vegies and 4-inch square strips of pasta type stuff, eaten with your hands.

The second night we were treated to a freshly prepared goat – head, liver, intestines, stomach – the best parts our hosts would argue. Luckily for us foreigners there were potatoes and carrots too.

This was a lunch, made from the same goat – lots of fat, some decent flesh parts of the animals and potato.

Back in town we enjoyed the yummy food of the Turkish restaurant.

New Friends

Old Friends

Car Troubles

Bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd

Bogged in a not-quite-frozen river for an entire day. The Ranger came to help after lunch and got bogged too!

We tried everything. Absolutely everything – even jumping on the back of the car, because maybe….well, we had no idea what that could possibly achieve.

The good news of our “bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd” story is that the weather was perfect – almost no wind, except when we tried a picnic lunch, and maybe about –10 temps with clear blue skies and a stunning backdrop of mountains, along with a good foot of gorgeous, powdery snow made for fun day of frollicking in the snow…for about 6 hours – then we started to get a bit worried.

We were taking no chances with frozen rivers after our day stuck the day before. The driver skidded the car successfully across the near frozen river while we watched with bated breaths and half-closed eyes, and then found our own way across.

About 40km from town our back wheel decided it had had enough and just came off.

Right when the sun was setting and temperature plummeting.

Ulaanbaatar in Autumn

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000+08:00

The month since I have returned to Mongolia from a brief visit back home has seen the landscape rapidly, but gradually, change from spring to autumn and now with some strong hints that a typically cold winter is on the way. As one expects in Autumn, the leaves turned - the range of colours in the leaves has been stunning - especially considering the few trees there are in this barren country.

The grass on the vast, endless hills and mountains began showing small sprouts of brown amidst the lush green. This has dulled to an almost uniform brown now. The weather has been kind - daily highs of 10 degrees, and some even higher, is very generous for this time of year. The kind of zero-ish temperatures we should be expecting hit last week. The nights are very cold -15, and the days are chilly at around zero, maybe reaching 5 degrees for what seems like 5 minutes!

It's also a time of change in other areas. A new group of AYADs arrived this week. It seems like only a few weeks ago the last "New AYADs" arrive - but it was three months ago. Now my intake are well and truly the old guys - which means the time for goodbyes is imminent. Very imminent in fact. Our group of six is saying it's first goodbye to one of our own on Saturday week. Living in a place like UB means there are frequent hellos and goodbyes - or housewarming and farewell events - which gets pretty disheartening, and it's even worse when it's your housemate that's leaving.

On the positive side we've got a new AYAD replacing the leaving AYAD in our apartment. And before we say goodbye a group of 4 of us are heading out, including our departing AYAD, to Bayan-Ulgii for a week - this is the Kazakh region in far-western Mongolia. I went here for work and loved it so much I wanted to go back as a tourist. We are going to see kazakh eagle-hunters, hear traditional throat singing, see ancient petroglyphs visit the highest peak in Mongolia and walk up to a glacier - which means we are more than likely going to freeze, spend most of the week without showering, being offered lots of salty milk tea and mutton. Good times!

This week I spent a few hours driving through suburban parts of town I had never been to before - in search of newly built ramps and universal access features (access for all people including those with a disability) such as a paths and curb ramps. We didn't find much, there are only a handful of usable ramps around - a little while ago Mercy Corps had a project that successfully had standards for universal access passed into national legislation. Now the project has been renewed for a phase 2 that will see promotion of the standards to actually be put into practice in new buildings and added to existing civic buildings.

Here are a few pictures from driving around town. It's such a cool place...snow covered mountains in the background, with modern buildings, buddhist temples and gers all mixed in. Hummers drive alongside ancient Russian trucks. Stores for designer clothes are next to stores for coal and wood to burn in gers (yurts).

Possibly the best part of winter is the star suits that babies/toddlers are dressed in.

The C is the equivalent of an L in Australia. My boss at work recently took a leave of absence. She told me that a month of this was spent learning to drive. In soviet times, when she was young, very few people had cars so learning to drive was totally unheard of. Now plenty of people drive without a license or get illegal licenses - but some people are honest. The honest ones, like my boss, spend a month in a car with 3 other learners. They spend the whole day taking turns at driving the group, along with an instructor.

Soviet-style apartments. These guys look identical for blocks on end. No idea how people know which one is there's!

Wood and coal for sale for the fires that keep gers warm.

Zuun Mood Felt Cooperative

2011-10-13T21:21:00.000+08:00

Today I visited a felt cooperative in the aimag centre of Tuv aimag - 45km south of Ulaanbaatar.

The cooperative has seven members including two with disabilities. With the grant they received from Mongol Derby funding they put in a ramp to their workshop as well as getting heating in their workshop and getting some equipment and raw materials.

While there I learned that they provide items to a well known souvenir shop - the only fair-trade place in town, run by a Christian group, called Mary and Martha.

Home

2011-10-13T21:09:00.000+08:00

A while ago I put up a little video of my apartment in Ulaanbaatar. Here are some photos taken today as I start the process of finding a new housemate to replace the other aussie volunteer who is heading home in a few weeks.

National Geographic Story on Mongolia

2011-10-12T14:13:00.000+08:00

A realistic write-up on the predicament of far too many former-herders in Ulaanbaatar.

The Urban Clan of Genghis Khan
An influx of nomads has turned the Mongolian capital upside down.
Click here to read: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/ulaanbaatar/belt-text

It is a similar story for former-herders in rural areas who have moved to regional centres as well (towns of 15,000-25,000). Without skills they struggle to find jobs but but their children get access to education, without having to live in an unsanitary dormitory away from home, and they still have the family ger to live in.

Also very true that many look on communist days with nostalgia. Thanks to a high level of planning, back then there was no traffic or pollution or ger districts in UB (barely anyone could afford cars, the population was strictly controlled, everyone was given an apartment and a job and there were enough buses to easily get around). Herders were subsidised (not unlike farming in modern-day western countries) so that people had a good quality of life. When the economy transitioned, herders carried on doing what they had been doing but found they didn't make enough money - something the government had known for decades. The logical solution was to get more animals - surely more animals would mean more money.

But it doesn't work that way. More animals cause disaster for the natural environment. More animals for everyone mean that the end product is not worth as much. When natural disaster hits and animals die, it means that the losses are bigger.

This is where groups like Mercy Corps come into the picture - the core goal is to get herders working smarter, not harder. Smarter could mean value-adding to the product: instead of selling the wool straight from the sheep, turn it in to felt, make some products and sell these. Smarter can also mean building up store of food for animals to cope with bad weather.

Or it can mean using technology to plan ahead - the Mercy Corps LEWS project has implemented an advanced computational model based on years of research to predict and monitor weather and fodder conditions so nomadic herders can plan where to take their livestock and prepare for bad weather.

The Best and the Worst

2011-10-11T20:52:00.000+08:00

When I was back home I felt like a broken record describing my experience in Mongolia as being the best and the worst of times.

This was never more true than on Saturday. The morning saw the most heart breaking thing I have ever had to do, while the afternoon was by far the most beautiful day in UB to date.

The heart break came in the form of a gorgeous little puppy abandoned on the front steps of my work earlier in the week. After a series of events, much deliberation and discussion, and foremost a feeling that I needed to do something for this little pup she ended up back at my place that evening with an understanding that she would be a shared responsibility between me and another housemate.

A few days later and she was being a respectably well-behaved pup, all things considered - of course there were wees and poos, she was only 5 weeks old. But at any rate, it was time for a lesson in cultural differences. Mongolians look at animals differently to Australians, at least. The puppy's other parent decided they were sick of her and no longer wanted her in the apartment. Full stop. Three days in.

So, I was left with a puppy I had fallen in love with (from the second I met her), no longer welcome in my home and with no one else wanting to take her. Her other parent's solution was to set her free on the street. We are coming into winter - it will be -40 degrees outside. Cars do not stop for dogs in UB. A city, especially this one, is no place for a puppy. Our little girl loved chasing buses...which was OK when I had her on a leash. So "setting her free" was not an option for me.

After getting the word out as wide as I could to see if anyone was interested in a puppy, and getting no response, there was only one responsible action left to take. I couldn't have done it alone - I had the excellent counsel of my other housemate (an Aussie) - and despite not wanting to do it, we decided we would have to take her to the vet to be put to sleep.

She had a great few days being spoilt rotten - better treatment than she would have received in a lifetime with a typical local family (I am sure there are exceptions). We couldn't bear to think she was being abused by new owners, or abandoned again when the novelty wore off, or freezing to death in winter, or painfully run over by a reckless driver....

So that was the "worst" of times.

On the other hand, and a million miles away emotionally, was the best of times that was Car Free Day in UB. The CBD - including the streets around my apartment, were blocked off to cars.. Despite being autumn, and the almanac telling me that the average maximum for this time of year is a mere 4 degrees, outside was a gorgeous 14! Everyone, it seemed, was out on the street with their families - walking on the roads, riding bikes, running, SMILING, saying hello... the joy and happiness was infectious. It was amazing.

The biggest intersection in town has a circus like pedestal in the middle where the police man stands to direct traffic. With no cars, children - and Aussie volunteers - could jump up and take some fun photos.

My friend pretending to be a traffic policeman.

People were drawing on the street with chalk - this is just outside my work, usually it is a parking lot from 8am-8pm 7 days a week.

Chess outside the hospital that is on the immediate left of my office.

Even after the cars were allowed back, that night walking down the street a car even stopped to let us cross the street - and the driver was smiling at us. Usually drivers attempt to run over pedestrians, or at least intimidate. Just amazing.

At work on Monday I was very impressed with people's attitude. Being Saturday, most people had things planned - some had very important meetings/appointments etc to get to. With the main streets blocked off the traffic was just horrendous. One colleague waited for 45 minutes for a taxi to get to somewhere important, then gave up - and went out to enjoy the peaceful streets with her family instead. I reckon in Australia she would've been whinging about how the way the event was organised meant she missed out on this important engagement. But instead, she just mentioned that that was how she came to be enjoying the day with her family. That's an example of the more laid back attitude that can make doing things in Mongolia so enjoyable (sometimes, at other times very frustrating).

Ah yes, the Project

2011-10-11T20:18:00.000+08:00

In 2011 MC implemented a huge, pioneering project in rural Mongolia. For the conference last week we put together a booklet outlining what we did and the results achieved. The Psycho-Social Support component of the project was a fantastic success - the idea being to help people who have gone through some kind of disaster to improve their mental state so they are empowered to help themselves, not just giving them money, or finding them a job for example.
You can see the booklet here:

Social Safety Nets project Your Success is Our Success Booklet

It has a success story from each of the 10 aimags (provinces) along with an outline of the components in general and specifcally for each aimag.
The final session of the conference was set aside for the program officers from each aimag, the managers from each aimag, and the UB project staff to share their experiences. The project has had a deep impact on all who have been involved, and as a result the session was very emotional and many tears were shed.

It's been amazing from my perspective to see the impact a project can have - both looking at the big picture with statistics and project outcomes, but even more so hearing the stories of so many project participants whose lives have been changed by their participation.

You can also see a video put together to show the project results:

Successful Projects, and Bowling.

2011-10-11T20:03:00.001+08:00

Mongolians love to compete and/or have a bit of fun. No work event is complete without some kind of competition - be it knuckle bones, or basketball, or trivia; there must be something. So it is fitting that the (almost) highlight of a big, important conference to show the results of a big, important project that has run throughout 2011 was bowling. Bowling is not the most popular sport in Mongolia - in fact, most of the 40 colleagues I went with had never ever been in a bowling alley. Many picked it up pretty quickly. About half way through the first round strikes were starting to be struck. By the second round it was a tight race to win. The techniques were pretty amusing, but for the most part got the job done. There was plenty of enthusiasm - lots of high 5's, every time anyone bowled and hit more than a couple of pins....and lots of confusion. It tooks a good half a round to get an understanding that each player bowls twice, and then the next one goes.

One of the best parts was that each players name was on the board, repeatedly and for a few minutes each time. This gave me and the other foreigner present the best opportunity we have come across the learn some names for people we see regularly but can never understand/remember/pronounce their names!

Like all Mongolian adventures, the trip started with safety in mind. 20 people in a bus that seats 12.

The friendly representative from Hovd aimag didn't ever quite master the technique, though he had sheer strength on his side.

As the games came to an end things were stating to get more heated.

Minties and Fantales?

2011-10-10T09:43:00.000+08:00

Don't be silly!

Welcome Back

2011-09-28T12:52:00.000+08:00

The 4th week of Autumn:

Beautiful reasonably heavy snowfall overnight.

Good/bad news is that the snow is melting because it's too warm outside (1 degree).

Hopefully we will get a few more snowy days before it gets too cold for snow!

Why Mongolia?

2011-09-21T22:11:00.001+08:00

During my brief visit back home I'm getting two questions popping up pretty frequently:

Firstly, why Mongolia?

And second, after seeing some photos and hearing some stories,

Are you seriously going back there?

Then I got home and saw this cool link:
photographing-native-mongolians-who-had-never-seen-a-photo-of-themselves/

Which answers both those questions, to my thinking. But to my thinking, the questions are pretty bizarre anyway!

As challenging as things are, there are plenty of wonderful experiences and beauriful people and amazing places!

Location:Australia

Steppe Riders - Take #2

2011-09-05T10:50:00.001+08:00

After 4 months in Mongolia I have had the opportunity to ride horses half a dozen times. This is following 24 years with no opportunity, or desire to ride a horse.But things change...and not being a person to become obsessed often or easily (cough, cough), I am just as surpised as you are to read that I am now all but obsessed with the brilliant experience that is riding a horse!This weekend we spent a night and day out at Steppe Riders - a horse riding ger camp about 45 minutes south-west of Ulaanbaatar.The location is stunning. We were treated to a handful of shooting stars across the amazing clear night sky - my first clear night in the countryside, seriously, in four months. Truly stunning. The forecast rain arrived about 3am, so by 8am it was a beautiful, clear, crisp day.It was a great ride, my horse wasn't as amazing as in Terelj (see earlier posts...), but he was OK. The whole group moved at pace and we weren't bothered by the usual frequent stops for adjustments or problems you expect with a dozen newbie jockeys.

After the ride, this gorgeous little boy found a plastic bag...the most amazing toy ever invented, he would have said. He was cackling away running up and down this little hill with the bag for wings...for over an hour, and still going when we left.

The Steppe Riders ger camp:

The bathroom at Steppe Riders:

(there is actually a decent pit toilet as well, a luxury in these kinds of places)

On my horse:

An example of the countryside....

Rain....

2011-08-30T11:59:00.000+08:00

Although a sprawling, "modern" city of 1.5 million people, Ulaanbaatar is yet to discover the benefits of drainage. I suppose that considering half the people live in gers with no water, power or sewerage, drainage for roads is not a priority...

So, when it rains, which this year has been an awful lot - in the "land of the eternal blue sky" - the city becomes one massive puddle of muddy water, easily half a metre deep in most places.

Given the rain and mud and puddles of water I caught a taxi to work this morning, and hit jackpot with a friendly driver!

"Does it rain in Australia?" (tiiii)

He excitedly scrambles around to find a certain CD, races to find the track he wants....

With an enormous grin, he asks

"Do you like Madonna?"

And plays:

These are the awesome, unique, often bizarre kinds of moments that make this such a beautiful country...

There Goes Summer....

2011-08-29T11:58:00.000+08:00

Today is the first day of the first week of Spring.

O bugger, not quite! I'm in the northern hemisphere....

Of course, there should still be 2 days of official summer left, but not in Mongolia.

To be fair, we have been blessed with an amazing, beautiful, gorgeous summer - the kind of summer that leaves you wondering how on earth there aren't more people here enjoying the truly splendid country Mongolia can be.

The kind of summer that has passed before you've blinked, and now it's easy to see why there aren't more people here!

The first day of the first week of Autumn is panning out thus: woke up to rain, temperature 10 degrees outside. Yesterday was 30 degrees! Now noon, it has warmed up to a staggering 11 degrees!

Over the last week and a half the change from summer to autumn has been gradual but definitely visible. Everything is kind of bleak and grey, the leaves are starting to drop, the flowers are starting to droop - and the vibe of the city is becoming resigned to the awful truth that winter is most definitely coming soon, too soon.

I've been a bit down with this change, feeling a deep, but strong, fear of the cold weather and pollution that will be here before I know it...

September 1 is the start of the school year.

Back in June, there was excitement in the air- most children were shipped off to the countryside, if not for the entire summer than at least for a few weeks,to spend time with those lucky family or friends who live in the land of clean air and wild strawberries. Most of my colleagues had some kind of summer house - a family home or ger around 10km out of the city where they relocated for summer. Now everyone is moving back, so the traffic is worse and the mood is low. The kids are getting ready for the school year ahead, the teachers among the expat group are back to work...

Worst of all, that long list of things to do, people to visit, places to see in summer is still a long list...with barely a dent, even though almost every weekend has been a successful attempt to make the most of the great weather.

I've definitely had a marvelous summer. It has been much warmer than I expected - mid 30s at times (with no air conditioning). Nothing beats Mongolia in summer. If I could have my way I'd switch a Canberra winter for a Mongolian summer every year, and hurry back to Australia in time to switch the first week of Autumn for the first week of Spring every year too!

Bayan Olgii

2011-08-28T12:58:00.000+08:00

The most western province of Mongolia, the Kazakh region. I was lucky enough to get a gig visiting here in preparation for the Mongol Rally teams passing through, and to visit Mongol Rally grant receipients/potential recipients, and visit some other Mercy Corps projects. It was a flying visit, in multiple ways - being a good 4 days non-stop drive on "roads", Mercy Corps flies staff out here, and being peak tourist season, flights were hard to come by. I flew out super early on a Tuesday morning, and returned mid-morning the next Thursday. I flew out with a Reader's Digest writer who was hoping to grab a ride back to Ulaanbaatar, or at least for a few days, with a Mongol Rally team bringing a fire engine from England to Mongolia! I had a brilliant time with the local Mercy Corps officer, great english skills and a lovely lady. We visited Mongol Rally grant sites in the village closest to the Russian/Mongolian border crossing. A very poor place, no jobs, 70% unemployment, and no water...the ground water is frozen year-round, so the town has no way to access water - which means no showers, no running water for homes etc. Mercy Corps are going to provide grants for building a children's playground - to mobilise the community to work together, and provide something for the local kids; and a grant for a group of women to form a sewing cooperative, get some training in making and running a Kazakh handcraft business - idea is they'll market their products to travelers passing by in summer, fresh into Mongolia after spending numerous hours/days at the border crossing...should be gold mine (relatively speaking) for the locals.

Being the Kazakh region there are big differences, and also alot of similarities. Families live in gers just in summer, the Kazakh gers are huge - lots of space, but a terrible idea come winter, they are too big to heat! The gers are richly decorated with wonderful colourful embroidery. Kazakhs are known for their hospitality - a spread of snacks is constantly maintained around the table, in case visitors drop by.

This is where I got my first taste of "airag" - fermemed mare's milk. The highlight of a Mongolian's summer...and the dread of any visitor's! My stuff tasted like yoghurt at first, followed by a strong hit of something completely unpalatable - fermented, slightly alcoholic, your gut reaction being to spit it out and wash out your mouth. Of course that would be the worst possible thing to do at that moment, so I obligingly swallowed...I got through 4 sips...while my companions devoured their entire bowls happily. Although risking offending my hosts there was no way I was going to get any more of that stuff down..luckily they were more amused at my 8/9ths filled bowl then offended...phew.

A few of the stories of the people I visited in Bayan Olgii. These are from the Social Safety Nets project being funding by USAID. The project has three parts - building communities, building employable skills and creating jobs, and Psycho Social Support training - training designed by the Red Cross, all targeted at rural Mongolians struggling after losing their livelihood due to the dzud (terrible combination of dry, hot summer and extremely cold winter with heavy snow-fall, resulting in an overall loss of 25% of livestock in Mongolia...much higher percentages in some areas) and the global financial crisis (yes, impact even here)...........

SSN - Psycho Social Support Training Participant

Zoya

Unfortunately Zoya's story is not an uncommon one. Her family used to be herders in rural Bayan Olgii, in far-western Mongolia. Following the severe weather conditions of the 'dzud' they lost most of their livestock and were forced to pack up and move to the aimag centre.

This new lifestyle was hard for Zoya. High regional unemployment and a lack of employable skills made it difficult for her or her husband to earn any income. Although surrounded by other families Zoya felt lonely and isolated, desperately missing the life she knew.

In her search for employment and support opportunities Zoya heard about Mercy Corps' Psycho Social Support Training. Since enrolling her life has changed dramatically. She has many friends from her class and feels connected to her community. She now has a job at a local wool-processing factory, after attending a training course in this field.

Now equipped with the self-confidence to proudly share her story, Zoya is brimming with enthusiasm for the benefits the classes have bought her. Impressed by the change in his wife, Zoya's husband has attended a few of the classes - when his work schedule allows, as he has now also found a job after attending training on construction building.

After losing her livelihood and all she knew, Zoya has found hope and much more through Psycho Social Support training. Beyond the despair she was buried in following her loss, she can now see there are many benefits for her children living in town. Zoya and her husband are able to cope with the struggles of life while holding on to hope of a better future for their family.

"I'm really happy to learn new skills from the classes. I found it very useful to learn how to deal with stress and skills for communicating with other people." Zoya

Ger Kindergarten Project

As part of the Social Safety Nets project Mercy Corps has established ger kindergartens for children living in the disadvantaged communities targeted by the project.

Guljayiina is an assistant at the kindergarten created in Bayan Olgii. Eight months since classes began, she can see an amazing improvement in all aspects of the children's lives.

"At first the children only wanted to play noisy, outdoor games - mostly pretending to be farm animals or dogs. Now they play in groups with their friends, using toys or making drawings. Adapting the children to a schedule with times for eating, playing, sleeping and learning also proved challenging."

Before the kindergarten began, none of the children had spent any time in a structured environment, spending their time at home with their families. All children have come from disadvantaged households where money and a lack of knowledge meant that hygiene and access to healthy food was very limited.

Now the children are excited to perform their daily hygiene tasks - brushing their hair and teeth, washing their hands and faces. They also have learnt to enjoy eating the strange food - at first unidentifiable - featuring lots of vegetables and healthy dairy products. Before the children would not eat the food at kindergarten, not knowing what it was. Now when they eat meals at home they ask their parents where the vegetables are.

This is one of the best parts of the ger kindergarten program. It's not only the children attending the kindergarten who benefit, but entire families. Children take their newly gained knowledge and skills home, where they enthusiastically share with their brothers, sisters and parents.

Aisanbat, Kindergarten Attendee

Aisanbat, a 5-year-old girl in Bayan Olgii, is glad her parents were forced to leave their herding lifestyle in the countryside and move to the aimag centre, where they now live in one of the most disadvantaged areas of the town. She is glad because, if this had not happened, she would not be attending the Ger Kindergarten - established as part of the Social Safety Nets project.

Since attending Kindergarten she has learnt a lot about hygiene and healthy eating. And she has made many new friends. Living in the countryside she would have no opportunity for interaction with other children beyond her brother and sister. But now, when her mother suggested she stay home one day, Aisanbat protests:

"If I miss kindergarten my friend will cry!"

A large part of the curriculum in the kindergarten includes personal hygiene. Aisanbat has embraced the benefits of keeping herself clean - she now teaches her little sister how to care for herself as well: how to brush their hair, how to clean their hands and face, how to brush their teeth and so on.

Aisanbat's mother, Anargul, can see a huge difference in the development in her daughter when compared to her older brother who had no opportunity to attend kindergarten. Before kindergarten began both mother and daughter were a little scared - none of her children had spent a day away from her before! But eight months later, she is thrilled with the benefits and looking forward to sending her youngest daughter to kindergarten as well.

***PS: Word was out that the Mercy Corps representative was visiting the Kindergarten. These lovely older Kazakh gentleman had wandered down and strategically placed themselves where we coudln't miss them. Turns out their grand kids go to the Kindergarten, and love it, and tell their grandpas all about it. Problem is the kindergarten is only funded til September (as part of the SSN project), so they wanted to know if it would be continued.

Good news is it will be, the local education department has found some funding to take it through until a Canadian government funded project will build a permanent building and take it over.

This kind of spontaneous display is great proof that the projects are meeting genuine needs in the community, creating positive change...!

Mongol Derby Funded Projects Map

2011-08-11T16:48:00.000+08:00

A little mapping project I've been working on "on and off" over the last little while, finally got it nice and presentable today:

Mercy Corps' Mongol Derby Projects Promo Video

2011-08-09T13:05:00.001+08:00

One of the projects keeping me busy at work recently, helping put this promo video together that we presented at the Mongol Derby training camp.

Hunting Strawberries

2011-08-07T21:35:00.000+08:00

Today I went to my colleague's country house about a half hour outside of UB to meet her family and hike in the forest for wild strawberries! After a slow start we eventually found hundreds of these delicious delicacies. The weather was perfect - the sun was shining, nice and warm but not ridiculously hot. The kids were beautiful and very entertaining company.

Following the hike we came back to town and visited the Children's Park - an amusement park with an interesting selection of rides and the usual things. The kids had fun on a big slippery dip and we all ate ice-cream, then it was time to come home :D

Home

2011-07-31T23:24:00.000+08:00

After two weeks in Russia (beautiful!) and a week for work in the western aimag of Hovd (amazing!), I am glad to be "home" for a bit, even if there is NO water, still, a week after being back!

Here is a little video tour of what I like to call home, a lovely oasis in the hectic, dirty, dusty, generally delapidated streetscapes of UB:

Chain Spotting

2011-07-31T22:51:00.000+08:00

While I might groan and grumble about the developing aspects of Mongolia - no hot water, no water at all currently, no toilets, no showers, entire blocks of main streets closed for weeks...ahm, yep, plenty to whinge about - there are *some* things I like about being in a developing country.

One of these is the lack of chain restaurants and stores. Mongolia is one of the few places on earth where there is no McDonalds. No KFC or Burger King or anything of that nature.

The closest they get is Loving Hut - Mongolia, the land of people that exist entirely on animal products - meat and dairy - is also the land where the only chain is a vegan, yes vegan, restaurant. That kind of logic is exactly what makes Mongolia beautiful!

In Russia for two weeks for a summer holiday there was a little bit of chain spotting.

First was Subway, in Ulan Ude

Second was Baskin & Robins, in Irkutsk.

It seems the Russians have good taste!

Russia pics

2011-07-19T16:00:00.003+08:00

Without my laptop I am limited in putting up only pics on my iPod for the moment.

Here is some pretty lake shots:

Amazing pirate ship playground

Our homestay:

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Two weeks in Russia

2011-07-19T16:00:00.001+08:00

My "year in Mongolia" is presently on holiday, as is most of Mongolia - think christmas time, summer holidays. With a whole week of public holidays and some mighty fine weather it seemed like heading north to lake baikal in siberia was the sensible thing to do.

Everyone has heard of siberia - where freedom-fighting contentious russians, poles and other europeans are sent as punishment by governments enforcing peace. Being a punishment, the experience should be unpleasant - freezing weather, no infrastructure, isolation etc etc.

We arrived in a heat wave, with high 30s and stunning days. The cities we have seen are massive by mongolian standards, small by russian standards, but big enough in reality. Beautiful parks and many fountains, intresting statues, lots of friendly people. We were blown away.

We are mostly around lake baikal, the deepest lake in the world, holding 20% of the worlds fresh water. The lake is stunning, and freezing at around 15 degrees. In winter it freezes over, making transport easier as you just drive across it. For us, we had to resort to trains and ferries.

Russia in general is entirely developed. This makes sense if you think about it, but was not what i was expecting. Coming from Mongolia, where things are literally just as they were when the soviet union collapsed (no dusting, no painting etc has occurred since, it seems) i was expecting something similar, especially in out of the way sibera.

Instead we have a wonderfully beautiful place, civilised the point of this gorgeous coffee spot on the seventh floor looking over the lake - the perfect place to read a weekend paper.

The lake is huge, and frequently covered in thick fog. The water is very clear, and is the most beautiful colours at different depths - blues and greens, with the steep rising mountains behind it.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Siberia

No News is Good News

2011-06-22T18:54:00.000+08:00

To pull out another cliche, time certainly does fly when you're having fun!

Actually, it flies when you're not having a whole lot of fun as well!

The last three weeks can be summed up as amazing - I have travelled 10 hours west on a 5 day trip, I have travelled 12 hours east for 5 days for work's annual meeting, I have visited training for Children with a Disability, I have celebrated a Mongolian birthday with wonderful friends in UB. I have made lots of plans for exciting projects at work, and even acheived a couple of things already, including a poster that has been printed and distributed!

In the "not so much fun" department are all of the above as well - travelling anywhere is tough in Mongolia, travelling 12 hours crammed between a metal rod and a drunk old Mongolian guy is not nearly as pleasant as it sounds. Celebrating a birthday with no mobile, internet and barely an english speaker has it's frustrations. Attending a work conference with a huge amount of interesting information and presentations, all in Mongolian, is frustrating. Working with people from a different culture, in fact across cultures (US, Macedonian and Mongolian) is very challenging.

Looking forward there are more trips in the works - heading west for a work trip, no details known, but should be next week - to the Kazakh region of Mongolia; then Naadam in early July - the Mongolian equivalent of Christmas, with wrestling, horse riding and archery; then hopefully off to Russia for 10 days or so!

Work is super-busy. Mongolians are notorious for leaving things til the last minute, and there are some pressing deadlines coming up. I am discovering, at least in my workplace, the last-minute thing is because they only just finished meeting another deadline, not because they were twiddling their fingers. With Naadam coming up there is a week of office shutdown, and most people, including me, are taking leave either side - the equivalent of trying to do something between mid December and mid January - but worse, because this is the only 12 weeks or so of the year that you can go outside! The catch is that, this is the only time of year you can do stuff outside - so there are lots of community events to plan and hold, lots of travelling to the provinces to work on projects, and lots of foreign visitors and events including the Rally and the Derby coming in!

Children's Day - June 1

2011-06-01T18:17:00.000+08:00

June 1 is a public holiday in Mongolia - Children's Day.

The celebrations are quite literal - everyone, it seems absolutely everyone, hits the streets with their kids. The kids are spoilt rotten with lollies, bananas, toys, games and various events such as singing competitions.

Sukhbataar Square, a huge open space in front of the Parliament building (which my house is behind) hosted thousands of people (it felt like it, anyway).

It's a great excuse for a mid-week holiday (Wednesday); and the weather put on a perfect show for the first day of summer. Following some torrential rain early last week, and warm weather since, the city has just popped out in green - trees are covered in leaves, grass is popping up everywhere and looks overgrown in plenty of places - it was snowing two weeks ago!

Man, it was packed...and more people streaming in constantly.

It's all a bit much for some of us...at least he had his Thomas shirt on.

The French Bistro under our apartment (we're the at the top) - outdoorish eating area now open. Awnings are going up on outdoor areas all around the place now that it's warming up.

UB is so beautiful at the moment. There were definitely not leaves on these trees a month ago when we arrived.

Cool Soviet style building next to our local supermarket, with a big statue of a random guy out the front.

More roadworks around the corner from our place...the street is now just a big hole.

Russian Jeep Blessing Photos

2011-05-31T15:29:00.003+08:00

Here are some pics of the Russian Jeep Blessing Ceremony from my first week at work (mentioned in an earlier post). The pics are courtesy of the Mercy Corps Mongolia library.

Our country director, Jennifer, placing some milk on each tyre of the new vehicles.

Followed by the traditional exchange of blue scarves. The scarf was then tied around the rear-view mirror of each car - these scarves are everywhere - in businesses, in cars - I am guessing it's to do with safety/prosperity/success.

And now the Mercy Corps Mongolia Head Office Team shot.

My colleagues in the Civil Society Department are circled below:

Warming Up

2011-05-27T23:27:00.000+08:00

Summer is coming....!

Today was the first day I have left home without a jacket. And I didn't need it! It was a beautiful mid-20s+ day outside.

The street outside that was a 2m hole a week ago opened this morning. The traffic lights, that have been redundantly running throughout the road works conveniently stopped working, causing chaos. And car accidents. UB is amazing.

The newly re-opened street is on the left. Btw, look at those green leaves! UB has burst out in green over the last few days, it's amazing!

Ramblings on Mongolian Society

2011-05-25T10:29:00.000+08:00

Time for something a bit more serious than chocolate and horses...a little bit of social observation to give you folks a bit more of an idea this place.

Since starting work I have heard alot about women's day to day life experience from my colleagues - families, work, child-raising etc. It dawned on my last night while talking with other volunteers that I had mostly talked to women because my colleagues were almost all women - they make up the majority of the work force, it seems. In my immediate team we have 2 men to 6 women. This ratio is the same, or slightly higher, than other teams at my workplace. Many of my AYAD peers work with only women, or perhaps a man in a senior role. And sure, we are working in the kinds of organisations that attract women etc. - but it is definitely the social norm that women will have a full-time job, while raising multiple children.

The women I am meeting all work very long hours - business hours in my office are 8.30am to 5.30pm. No one (else!) leaves at 5.30pm, on days I've worked later my colleagues are still busily working away.

This seems bad enough for work/life balance. But don't forget your commute to work. How bad could it be, in a country of 2.7 million people, with a population density of 1 person per 1.75km-squared? I have a solid half hour walk to work. In the mornings I have been piking and getting a taxi because I tend to leave the house around 8.29.

After talking with my colleagues I need to have a spoonful of concrete... - these guys spend 1-1.5 hours standing in a jam packed bus to come to work in the morning; and in the evening, with traffic, it usually takes almost 2 hours (standing the whole way)! Add on to that an hour of english class after work and that makes on super-long day. Leave home at 7am and arrive home around 10pm. The distance they are traveling is not huge, if they were going to the farthest point of suburbia it is only 15km - the problem is UB has one main road (Peave Ave) which is indescribably jam-packed with traffic the entire day - buses, cars, "taxis". The mining boom has seen a steep rise in car-ownership - Lexus 4WDs, Mercedes, Hummers...what you'd expect in a country where 1 in 3 people is living in poverty.

And sure, you're thinking young people like myself could handle that kind of lifestyle - it's not like we have family to care for? True for me, but not for Mongolians. Based on my exhaustive surveying of locals, the usual age for your first child is 21. It is very common to have a large gap between children, a gap of 10-12 years. I have not met anyone with children closer than about 6 years in age. One hypothesis for this is the practicality of the first child being old enough to care for their siblings.

Nice in theory you might say? Well, it's more than a theory here. I was amazed to hear one colleague tell me her 12 year old son does all the housework - washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking - yes, he cooks his mother dinner! And the more people I meet the more common this seems to be. This little lad goes to school from 1pm-6pm, does all the household duties and finds time to play games at the internet centre with his friends, I am assured. Like most kids, he will be shipped off to the countryside to hangout with the grandparents for a month, or two, or three in the summer holidays.

Paid maternity leave is 4 months, there is no attempt at replacing an employee who is on maternity leave which results in a fair amount of workplace pressure and/or personal responsibility to return to work asap after giving birth - usually women will stop work around 7 months and come back when their child is around 2 months old. One would assume this means breastfeeding is not common after around 2 months. In saying that, from observation there is definitely none of the ridiculous stigma attached to breastfeeding in public that is found in western cultures, nor any attempt at modesty.

Most women have 2, maybe 3 children. If you are particularly productive and have 4 children the Government awards you with a special Medal and you receive some kind of monetary gift as well.

Encouraging population growth has many motivators - a hundred years ago when the Chinese were ruling over the Mongols they were attempting to wipe out the race, and doing a nice job - there were only around 800,000 left. In the early 20th century the Mongolians got rid of the Chinese, with Russia's help. Russia then decided they would stay around and help out, alot, in much the same way they helped out central asia and eastern europe until 1990. But that complex and interesting story will wait for another day. Back to population - by 1956 the population was 845,481. Today it is estimated at over 2,700,000. Only 2.7 million Mongolians....wedged between over 1,300,000,000 Chinese (1.3 billion) and 142,905,200 Russians. Yep, I'd be worried too.

So to paint a stereotypical picture of the Mongolians I am meeting - they are female, mid 30s, with 2 children, the eldest is around 10-12 and then there is the baby, 1.5 years. They are working full-time - probably 45-50 hours a week. Dad may or may not be in the picture - rarely have the people I speak to mentioned their partners, in a way that would make me think they weren't around if I was talking to an Australian, but later evidence suggests they are around. The women I am associating with are intelligent and hard working, with strong opinions. One of the key factors in the soviet socialist system was to tap into the previously under-utilised 50% of the population - women. It seems this has had a wonderful impact on promoting their contribution to society in Mongolia.

It can't help that Mongolian children are ridiculously cute - utterly ridiculously cute. Especially when they are rugged up in super puffy star-shaped jumpsuits for winter.

It is very striking how affectionate parents are with their children - always holding them while walking down the street, carrying them around shopping centres, children sit on parents laps in the car...oh hang on, there are no strollers in this picture, or car seats (that 5 seater car is carrying 10 Mongolians anyway). While it's impossible for PWD (People with Disabilities) to get around UB, it's very hard for parents with children. Not a chance in hell of pushing a stroller. Very unlikely anyone in that car is wearing a seat belt, let alone getting a car seat for that baby.

As a disclaimer, this is based on my observations - I am not observing women living in poverty in the ger districts of the city, or women living in the countryside (I will be interacting with these women throughout the next year though, so will be interesting to compare). I am working at a fantastic workplace where people love their job (not as common as we would all like), for an organisation that does amazing work to help disadvantaged. The lifestyle I have described above falls into the more positive life experiences of city-dwelling Mongolians. And these guys are paid probably somewhere in the range of $250-450 US a month.

One Month?!?!

2011-05-22T21:59:00.000+08:00

It has come to my attention in the last few minutes that it is over one month since we left Australia!!

Time has passed incredibly quickly. Up until this weekend things had been pretty hectic - arrive and straight away we were finding somewhere to live, moved in two days later, then language lessons for two weeks, then start work!

In terms of a general wrap up - housemates and house is great, the weather has warmed up tremendously - still with the odd snow shower of a morning, but have had as warm as 27 degrees one day last week! Today I went out in shorts :) I am slowly finding things to eat, my diet doesn't have the same variety it did in Oz - gluten free is not "in" here yet (as an aside, vegetarianism definitely IS - there is almost a vego/vegan restauarant on every corner it seems - this has come up pretty quickly I'm told, so maybe gluten/dariy/soy/capsicum/olive free will be the next fad...I won't hold my breath :) My mongolian has stalled...although I am remembering more words at the rate of about one a day - today I used the words for "big", "small" and "book" - add in hello and thankyou, along with left/right/straight/stop (for taxis) and that is about my readily-available-in-brain vocabulary range at the moment.

Last week was my first week of work on Mongolia - also my first week of full time work in 5 weeks or so and the first time being in an office full time (rather than working from home) since January...so quite a shock to the system!

I am working in the Civil Society Department of Mercy Corps Mongolia - a team of 6 + me. Mercy Corps also has an Economic Development department - you should get the gist of their focusses from their titles (along with other typical organisational departments like Finance (4 pple), HR (1 person) etc). The Economic Dev Dept is much bigger (around 20 staff). The plan, I think, is that I will work where I can with each of the staffmembers on their projects - being such a small team these guys work amazingly hard, and each part of a program is pretty much handled by one person.

Projects I'll be working on include the funding we get from the UK group The Adventurists who run the amazing Mongol Rally (London to Ulaanbaatar in a tiny car) and Mongol Derby (1000km horse race across the steppe) - checkout
http://www.theadventurists.com/ to see cool pics and info about these adventures.

Other projects include enhancing social interaction of PWDs (People with Disabilities) - I am quickly becoming aware of the nightmare it is for people with a disability to get around mongolia, and especially the capital city. Over the last couple of years Mercy Corps projects got a heap of legislation passed into law...now the challenge is getting that law put into action - there is very little, generally speaking in all areas of life, effort to obey laws or penalties for not doing so.

Office culture here is a bit different to in Australia. There is not the slightest idea of work/life balance. My office hours are 8:30-5:30. Most staff are there until 6:30/7pm, and arrive around 8am. They work through lunch. I am going to try and encourage some greater efficiency/less work hours ideas, but if past AYAD volunteers experiences are anything to go by these efforts will be in vain.

The projects at work are all in the countryside - which means frequent trips to various locations, which hopefully I will be a part of. Friday afternoon saw talk of a two day trip this week for a colleague and I - fingers crossed it goes ahead!

Outside of work life is quickly being filled with the sorts of everyday things that fill life at home - housekeeping type duties, eating, finding time to exercise...also the not-so-usual activities: Mongolian language lessons will be taking up 2-3 hours from next week. Last week on Wednesday afternoon we were told it was International Museum Day 'today', so we quickly made plans to head along to Chojin Lama Temple museum that evening - one of the other AYADs from my intake is working there, so I was keen to visit her workplace, as well as see the great museum. There seems to be no lack of birthdays, house-warmings, farewells etc to celebrate come the weekend....not necessarily my scene, but a late night or two doesn't hurt occassionally :)

As the weather is warming up everyone - expats and mongols alike - are keen to head out to the countryside come the weekend. A lack of gear saw me miss out on a two day hike this weekend, but if I can help it I will be getting out there and seeing the real Mongolia as much as possible while summer lasts.

This was evident when I went along to a Mongolian church that does real-time english translations (you get a little radio and tune in to listen to the guy translating into english!). I am super keen to get involved in a church here - I am certain this will happen come winter, at the moment many church-goers are away of a weekend - as I have been too, and will be. I heard an inspiring sermon on the church in Mongolia - this year is 20 years since Christianity first came to Mongolia. It is now around 2.5% of the population and they have a goal of 10% by 2020. This was a long and involved sermon - we didn't finish the service until after 1pm...and there was no morning-tea for that boost of energy pre-message! (shout out to Lakeside :) To and from work I see a large, fancy Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) headquarters - a daily reminder of some of the challenges facing the spread of Christianity in Mongolia. In the city, there is a new Mormon Church right next door to a Buddhist worship centre, across the road from one of the seediest nightclubs...

As great as Mongolia is so far with all its interesting discoveries, I am definitely missing many things from Australia; not the least of which is all my friends and family. With life being busy here I haven't been in touch as much as I would like to - thanks for all your prayers and support, looking back on how things here have turned out I am mightily blessed!

Location:UB

Challenges

2011-05-18T16:02:00.000+08:00

UB has its challenges, but not the ones I was expecting!

Day #2 of blaring music across the road from my office, yesterday it was an Aqua album, with intermittent renditions of the chicken dance - I kid you not, all day! Today its mongolian pop, with intermittent crazy frog.

Day #3 of NO hot water. This will continue until the 1st of June - it'll be over two weeks without a hot shower!! Keeping in mind that UB is the dustiest place on earth, showers are a necessity...

Second Day at Work

2011-05-17T10:05:00.002+08:00

second day @ work: blessing ceremony for 3 brand new "russian jeeps". Ceremony involves sprinkling milk on each tyre of each jeep, then presenting a blue scarf to the driver of each jeep, which was then secured inside the car. The US country director was doing so well...it seemed to any non-mongolian present...but she had made the horrifying offence of going round the jeep anti-clockwise...

*pics to come, hopefully*

Terelj Trip: Sunday = Horse Riding

2011-05-08T22:02:00.000+08:00

On Sunday our plan was to ride horses: in Mongolian fashion we had no idea where these horses would come from. Our ger camp wanted a ridiculous rate to get us (a group of 12 or so) 6 horses; so instead we set off walking down the main road in search of locals willing to lend us their horses in return for some cash. We spotted a group of what was hopefully horses in the distance and set off walking, as we neared two large buses pulled up, filled with school children...they also wanted to ride horses. This led to another typical Mongolian experience - hanging around, waiting...eventually the kids had had enough and it was our turn!

I don't much care for controlling animals, like horses, give me a motorbike anyday! But...these guys are pretty small...everyone else was doing it, how hard could it be..

I got up and expected to be led by one of the horse owners, with the group of riding-newbies. After a minute or so, the owner who was leading me had had enough and reckoned I could go it alone. This was certainly more interesting than being lead at the slowest pace possible - my horse believed he should be in front, and that he should choose when to speed up and slow down. This was all fine in the huge open area we were just roaming straight ahead on - but not when we needed to make a left turn across a road!

Straight ahead was home for the horse, he had a glance around and could see that we were well ahead of any of the owners, so he decided he would attempt to sneak home. It seemed he forgot I was on top of him - no amount of yanking the reigns, yelling "stop", trying "zogsora" (mongolian for stop) would get him to stop, let alone turn left. Thankfully he wasn't moving terribly fast, eventually my owner caught up and lead the rogue horse in the right direction.

Heading up the road home the owner and another mate were now riding one of the horses, cheekily supposing I hadn't had quite enough fun for one day they came up alongside me and got the whip onto my horse, getting us all to travel along at a fantastic pace - only for 250m or so...it was great!

Snow in Summer!

2011-05-05T23:44:00.000+08:00

While the UB-ians are aghast at the return of snow, on the first day of summer even(!), us AYADS are positively joyful with the fun and beauty the white-stuff brings to this dusty city. Covered in snow, UB is beautiful - treacherous to walk anywhere with icy puddles, and a little on the cold-side, but it is worth it!

Plus, the temperature and snow is perfect for the odd snow-ball fight...speaking from experience.

The pictures below are from various balconies off my apartment, taken by my talented AYAD housemate.

Digital Game

2011-05-04T23:31:00.001+08:00

Try and imagine my excitement in spotting this not so familiar game: -take note of it's title!

Of course I purchased this in anticipation of many apartment-bound nights come winter :)

Now try and imagine my mood only moments later to find a range - yes multiple varieties, 5-6 - of *Swiss* dark chocolates I can safely eat!!!

In a similar fashion I was super stoked to find a bargain whiteboard at the stationary shop under our apartment. I was, as always, eager to obtain one of these essential items but couldn't fathom how I'd find one I could afford, and then how I would get it home!

Reflecting on these moments of joy, it's odd the things that get me excited! I think there is something comforting in finding some of my favorite things in a place that is as foreign as I've ever experienced.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Shopping centre south of the square.

The first day of summer...

2011-05-04T22:49:00.001+08:00

Yesterday was amazing-17 degrees, the sun was shining, the city was beautiful! Today being the traditional first day of summer I was expecting something similar, but instead was greeted by rain, sleet and finally magical snow!

We finally got Internet connected, so pictures and video will be coming thick n fast if I can harness some enthusiasm and get the hang of using all my gadgets (notice where this post came from! Prob is my footage is on another gadget!)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:UB

Food Finds

2011-05-02T23:22:00.000+08:00

3L of Coconut Milk

Over 1KG of Corn Chips!!!

Enough rice noodles to feed an army

A tin of Red Kidney Beans to try and show you the size of the other stuff! It all looks in proportion to each other, but trust me these things are massive!!

House Hunting

2011-04-30T22:29:00.000+08:00

This room is pretty much all I could ask for in a room...unfortunately it was miles away from my work...

Arriving in Mongolia!

2011-04-26T22:44:00.000+08:00

As oft happens, updating my blog has fallen by the wayside in the mad rush that has been my first week in UB (Ulaanbaatar), Mongolia.

We left Sydney at 3pm on Easter Sunday. We arrived in Mongolia Tuesday morning at 7am local time, 10am Sydney time. This made the journey 46 hours from Brunkerville to UB!

Our introduction to how Mongolia operates came with a 12-hour delay on our Seoul to Mongolia flight, instead of leaving at 1830 we didn't take off until almost 4am; this was with many changed estimated leaving times in between. The 6 of us travelling over together spent this entire time together - sharing the highs of touch downs in Singapore and Seoul, and the lows of hours and hours with nothing to do in Seoul Airport. The delirium that no sleep and high-level excitement and anticipation can induce made for many interesting, and some never to be repeated, moments on this journey.

As we began our descent through thick cloud cover we began to spot huge snow-covered mountains, and then tiny ger (yurt) settlements and some buildings...and finally the dirty city of Ulaanbaatar! As we touched down in easily the roughest landing of my life, it seemed the airplane's brakes were intermittently working!

From here on in our experience can only be described as truly Mongolian: the plane was late, although getting off the plane quickly and being towards the front of the immigration line we managed to be the last ones processed - the locals just barged in as they wished! Collecting our luggage seemed to be going well, one of my bags was first off! But...as time passed, my travelling companions collected all theirs and I was still waiting...increasingly anxiously. The carousel stopped...and I was still without my main bag, containing all my clothes...a few minutes later - hallelujah! - it popped off onto the stopped carousel and we could emerge into the freezing reality of our new home!

Our Mongolian "mother" - the Program Manager for the AYAD Volunteers - was there to greet us and transport us by mini bus to our hotel. The bus-ride quickly overtook the plane landing as the scariest journey of my life! The road was filled with enormous potholes, the traffic was a bizarre mix of 4WD Porches and Toyotas - shiny and brand new; packed buses; decades old mini-buses; Police Cars; ambulances; trucks and anything Japanese or Korean made from the last 10 years. There is no line down the middle of the road, and the drivers see no need to stay on a particular side.

Little was I to know this was one of the better roads in UB - the traffic here is intense - cars and pedestrians somehow manage to go where they want when they want, how they want - and amazingly we have only seen on minor car accident in a week! I am starting to get the hang of walking out onto the road into oncoming traffic with confidence and making it to the other side without running, being hit by a car, falling through a pothole or worse!

Our mini-bus was stopped 5 times by police on the way to our hotel, each time our driver had to get our of the car and show his licence, and was then directed an alternate route to the one he had been heading. It turned out this was due to a small protest going on in the city, as a precaution the police were directing any mini buses away from the centre of town - last time there was a protest it got way out of control and 5 or so people died....so understandable that they were being cautious.

After arriving at our hotel we all passed out for a few hours before apartment hunting that afternoon. There were plenty of interesting sites and quirky things going on, following 2 days of no sleep - which I will post in good time!!!

Fun Stuff from Korea Stopover

2011-04-25T22:47:00.000+08:00

A Church?

I'd prefer a wizard..

Gothenburg

2009-03-14T06:42:00.000+08:00

Gothenburg was a pleasant surprise - nice pedestrianised streets and cool architecture, topped off by a huge shopping centre bustling with culture - there were three big things going on inside the shopping centre:

1. An exhibition of the 'Rites of Life' project, chronicling rites of passage across world cultures..the photography was top notch, and there were short descriptions of the context for the photos in each section...really intersting and moving stuff.

Check out the website: http://www.ritesoflife.com/

2. Some kind of food competition - people making all kinds of shapes - animels, cars, animals in cars....no, there were alot more...out of all kinds of stuff...and bread made into things like mooseheads...

3. The Gothenburg Wind Orchestra playing a lunchtime recital of lots of cool stuff..

Denmark to Sweden

2009-03-14T06:27:00.000+08:00

Trying to escape the rain in Denmark I trained most of the day and found myself in the far north, at Frederikshavn...timing my arrival to perfection, I battled a snow blizzard, the wind blowing in exactly my direction, even when I changed direction, all the way to the tourist office - only to watch the weather mysteriously calm as I stumbled, soaking wet and half frozen, into the warm office - where the staff were anxiously eyeing the clock with only a few minutes til their weekend.

After some fruitless calling around by the helpful lady the best room we could find was way out of my price range, so heading to Sweden on the late ferry seemed like a good idea.

And there began my next battle with the weather - again, timed to perfection, this time the not quite snow, but still frozen rain, began to fall just as I stepped outside in search of a payphone - my mobile was stubbornly refusing to work, and was quickly dropping power bars with each attempt. The payphone was no friendlier - instructions in Danish and a broken 6 key..which I needed thrice...got me no closer to a bed in Gothenburg.

After some more battling the eleements, again, after thoring in the library (free internet) I was soaked to the bone, I eventually found another payphone - things were looking up. This one accepted my money, and the number I dialled worked...there was a bed free, at the expected exorbitant hostel rate in Scandanavia..so off to Sweden it is!

On asking the hostel woman the most important question - how do I get to the hostel - I received the very helpful response...'hmm, its kind of complicated, just ask someone when you get there'! I was later to find that this must be part of the swedish hostel association's handbook - it was the stock response from each hostel, but I wasn't so lucky to have all of them in my lonely planet!

Not the best sign, luckily this place was in my guidebook so I had a good idea of where to go. On arriving, it became obvious that a pair of US girls were also heading to the same hostel, so we trudged together through the snow - yay! - and found the place fairly easily.

After a day in Sweden I feel qualified to make the following observations...

- things do not run quite as smoothyl as in, say, Germany...for example the Swedes have a brillant train seat reservation system - there is no marking on the actual seats...so those of us who don't have a reservation rush to find a seat, only to have someone come along and say its theirs, after confusion ensues, you get up and find another seat...and the process continues until three minutes before the next stop...and then starts again!

- they are the first country in europe to understand pedestrian crossings...they slow down, and stop in plenty of time, even if you aren't half way across the road already

- they have lots of tv shows sub titled, instead of dubbed into swedish - brilliant!

Things I'm Gonna Miss

2009-01-28T07:36:00.001+08:00

Although it feels like only a few days have passed since first arriving in beautiful Salzburg, I have come along way since September 12....although not necessarily in my knowledge of German! I have travelled to Linz, Vienna, Innsbruck, London, Switzerland, Spain and Italy...not too bad! and there is plenty more travelling to come.

I have climbed mountains, skiied mountain(s), and seen many more mountains!

I have immersed myself somewhat in Austrian culture - all its beer loving, lederhosen-wearing, socially closed and seemingly ill-mannered quirks...and learnt alot about the other European cultures represented among the exchange students: Czech, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, German, Swiss, Spanish, Mexican, New Zealandish, Norweigan, Finnish, Swedish, French...!

After 4.5 months on Salzburg there are alot of things I'm going to miss...alot Good, some bad, and a few just plain Ugly!!

-risking your life everytime you cross AT a pedestrian crossing!

-eeeeverything being closed on Sundays

-being greeted with "Gruss Gott" in every shop

-the peaceful silence of tuning off to 90% of the verbal noise going on around you...because you can't understand it!

-the wonderful mountains of the Alps all around...living in the shadow of the mighty Untersberg

-catching the S3!

- the knowledge that, if I had the money and motivation, I could be in a whole other country in no more than 3 hours

-living 60 seconds walk, with only 10 steps not in a building...from my school

- seeing the Festung (Castle) towering over the old town, and in the distance from Urstein

- saying I live in "Puch Urstein"! (say Poooock Ooo-er-st-I-n)

- certainly not least the wonderful Salzburg International Church and the brilliant friends I have made there....and the lazy Sunday afternoons that followed

But most of all, the wonderful people I have been blessed to spend this semester with, from all over the globe - and especially the cultural stereotypes they have bought.....thankyou guys!

Just a few points to sign off:

-Vegemite is the best thing to put on toast, &

- Pavlova is Australian, because

-Everything good comes from Australia! :P

Valencia..aka...Valenthia...aka the place where oranges come from!

2008-12-27T12:55:00.000+08:00

After a wonderful week at Katsdorf it's a little odd to be heading to a brand new country - new culture, new language, and new climate. In the space of a week my comprehension of German had improved out of sight...in spite of the Katsdorf dialect...and I could feel it all instantaneously rushing out of my head as we flew away from Austria!

So much for the new climate part of it -- the pilot announces that the weather in Girona, where I am landing, is in the negatives, raining and they are expecting snow showers that evening.

Spain colder than upper Austria? Go figure!

The destination for the day is Valencia, first a flight Linz to Girona, then train to Barcelona and then high speed train to Valencia where Jordi aka Georg aka my personal tour guide will be waiting :D

Although long, the highlight of the journey is the first class service on the high speed train to Valencia. When booking the ticket the special price for first class was the same as second class, so I booked a first class ticket. Big comfy seats with lots of leg room, a full dinner, endless drinks and nibblies, a newspaper and an hilarious movie on the TV screens made an awesome training experience - while the train sped along at upto 200km/hour.

In Valencia, as expected, Georg was waiting. Luckily the weather here knew I was coming, and was the warmer Spanish temperatures I had expected.

Wow...writing this all out, a month after travelling, is alot harder than it sounds! Let's just say there were lots of highlights. Spanish food is brilliant: the Spanish Tortilla (potatoes and eggs...yum!), the garlic sauce stuff with potatoes, the Paella...wunderbar!

Saturday's agenda was touring the city..this include the cool modern buildings, Americas Cup harbour and a circus!

Along with the old town of Valencia, very different to to the alstadts of the Austrian cities.

Sunday my curse involving weather had realised its mistake on Saturday - miserable, rainy and cold...but we had plans for lunch in a nearby lake. The lake was amazing - a shallow swamp like thing, with roads only wide enough for one car criss crossing throughout the kilometres long and kilometres wide 'lake'. With the horrible weather it was certainly a site, beautiful in a gloomy kind of way.

Easily the best of Valencia was the Gulliver, in the "River":

View Larger Map

Austrian Whitish Christmas

2008-12-27T10:50:00.000+08:00

After November's anticipation of Christmas Carol season approaching, busy December passed with barely a thought of Silent Nights or Reindeers...not to worry, with the help of Youtube I make up for a month's missed festive sing alongs with the now annual viewing of White Christmas (classic!) and lots of classic carols from Bing and co.

So...after a hectic week at Uni the reality of Christmas being just around the corner started to sink in. The last minute rush of errands and Christmas gift buying was compounded by a miserable rainy, freezing cold Salzburg day, and Salzburg old town being jam packed with tourists....sigh.

But, I survive, and start my Christmas Euro-Adventure on a train to Linz - ready to celebrate Kat's Birthday and then Christmas, Katsdorf style.

Sunday is Kat's bday so we Saturday night is filled with cards, bowling and dancing...into the early hours of Sunday. While the weather is miserable outside - not cold enough to snow, but rainy and too cold to want to venture out - inside we spend a lovely afternoon celebrating Kat with a range of friends and family members coming and going in a kind of open house.

As Christmas was approaching I was anxiously waiting to see if my dream of a White Christmas would become reality. Unfortunately the Linz weather had no intentions of giving a pre-Christmas covering of snow...but I did get to make my first snow man in Europe! Kat and I headed to higher ground in search of natural spring water, snow and pretty views - and we found it...along with the mandatory snow ball fight and frozen bodies.

Keeping an ongoing record of the happenings when travelling is a good idea...unfortunately I didn't do that...so now the events of the week have no kind of chronological order!

Other activities during the week were meeting up at the Christmas Markets in Linz with some of Kat's Uni friends, many of whom have gone their separate ways.

Another night we went along to an ice hockey match - not quite as thrilling as watching footy back home, but entertaining nonetheless. Unfortunately Kat has a bit of a reputation for making Linz lose...every game she has attended they have lost, and the curse continued on this ill-fated night.

Finally the reason for the location was approaching - the Christmas festivities were about to begin...a day early! Strangely enough we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve :D

Kat does something like the Sunday School (but its not on Sundays) at her Church, and on Christmas Eve the children perform some kind of reenactment of the Christmas story - so off to Church we went. The Church was packed with families, although notably most only had one parent in attendance...the reason for this being that the Christkind will be visiting the home....

Unlike our debate about when the Christmas Tree should be put up, the Austrians have it much simpler..but I think not quite so fun :D The Christkind (some kind of feminine angel like being, no one has ever seen it, so we cannot be sure what it is) brings the Christmas Tree and the Christmas presents on December 24. After the Children's Service at Church they arrive home to find the Christkind has visited :D

First stop was Christmas at Kat's maternal Grandma's. The family sat around the table, singing carols, doing reading and some discussion about the significance of Jesus' birth for our own lives.

Then the exciting part - the Christmas Tree is covered in real candles, which are lit - making a very pretty Christmas tree. Then presents, followed by food - some special kinds of sandwiches that Kat was looking forward to all day!

Next stop is home...and the Christkind has been! The presents are under the tree, and the family gathers round. Kathi (Kat's Mum) lights the candles on the tree...another beautiful tree alight! Then the anticipated giving and receiving of presents, with much joy, ensues.

So...Christmas celebration count so far is two...and there's one more to come - Gerhard's parents place, just a minute's walk down the lane. Again the family gathers round the table (the kind of wooden table with seats built into the wall that all Austrian homes seem to have) to sing carols - granted, this time with a bit more volume and a little less solemness.

Again, my favourite part -the Christmas tree is lit...and then the presents are given and received.

But that's not all folks - we haven't been to Church yet! The Christmas service starts at 11pm - it's a long day! Interestingly the service attracts a very youthful crowd...and after the expected carols, reading, sermon and communion the reason becomes much clearer: we head across the street to the local for a drink, or two....only in Austria!

The temperature is getting colder...and there's been rumours of snow all week...but still nothing white falling from the sky :(

By the time we get back it's Christmas Day - but the celebrations are over as far as the natives are concerned. Luckily for me I'm just in time to catch up with the family for the real deal, on Christmas afternoon back home. After a long catchup it's finally time for bed...only an hour before Brydie usually wakes us up on Christmas Day!

A few hours later my chances of getting a White Christmas are running thin. Its a dreary morning, with no sign of snow. Convinced that I would wake up to white all around, I dejectedly go back to bed for an hour so....after finally getting the motivation to rise, I take a discouraged peek outside the window...and surprise, surprise, there is the smallest sprinkling of snow starting to fall :D The snow doesn't last long, and there isn't much of it...but that is barely the point! On the walk to Gerhard's parents place its cold out, and there is enough snow to make the ground, fences and roofs appear white - yay!!

Christmas Day is very pleasantly spent with Gerhard's family - grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins over lunch and then an afternoon of chocolates, gossip and news for the oldies and poker for the kids, before more food! Sounds perfect...unfortunately all my luck must have been invested in the snow fall, cause I win just 3 hands in 3 hours of poker...ruining my flawless European Poker record. After a day of sitting and eating we're in dire need of some exercise - as the sun is setting we brave the chill for a lovely walk in the icy lanes around Kat's home, through fields overlooking Katsdorf, with the setting sun in the background.

Boxing Day arrives and its time to head off for Spain - warm weather! sun! no, the weather has had it in for me since I arrived in Europe (something Jordi has a theory about) - its colder in Barcelona than in Linz! Snow showers are expected in Girona!

Mozarteis...what else would it be in Salzburg?

2008-12-19T15:33:00.000+08:00

Tonight the girls that were left in Salzburg headed to the Mozarteis for a fun night of ice skating.

The weather had taken a turn just in time - there was snow all around....well it had started to melt, but there was still enough snow for snowball fights :D

Advent in Rif

2008-12-14T12:42:00.000+08:00

Walking around Rif today I saw a heap of signs about Rif-Advent. From what I could gather they count the days of Advent with a party at a different family's home each night - what a cool idea! Tonight is number 13, and this house is the closest you could be to the Fachhochschule, so I took that as a sign and went along to see what the locals are upto.

The host read a poem and said some words...I couldn't follow much of it, as of course it was in German! I could make out a few words here and there and maybe got the gist of it...maybe not! Another one of those occasions when I really wish I could just speak and understand German! argh! In saying that, its hard not to chuckle when the gruff wife points to her husband and says "das ist mein Mann".
True to Austrian fashion the locals weren't overly friendly. Of course, ,the ones who were couldn't speak much English! There were about fifty people there, from tiny kids to barely standing oldies. The hosts had alot of Gluhwein prepared, along with chocolates, a range of sausages and bread. Everyone stood around the fires drinking Gluhwein and smoking, while the boys found sticks to play with the fires...

A really nice idea it seems...a different house each night in the lead up to Christmas :D

I'm Making a List..and Checking it Twice....

2008-12-14T01:48:00.000+08:00

Last night Santa visited Puch, and wish awesome results.

The occasion was the Erasmus (Exchange) Christmas Dinner - most of the Erasmus students turned up, with a few rings ins. Everyone bought something traditional from their country for what turned out to be a massive feast. There was Pavlova (disupted origin..the Kiwis made it), Polish cake, Austrian cake, Swiss Macaroni, Czech potato salad, Norweigen fish stuff...the list goes on.

Along with food everyone bought a gift for their Secret Santa victim. I was lucky enough to get some awesome Minnie Mouse slippers, just what I needed! From the looks of things most people were very happy with their presents, so the organisation was worth it!

To round out the evening Jordi and Rita played an awesome hour long video they have made of all the Erasmus students....and Roger! They had gone round knocking on doors unannounced, filming the results - sometimes this was hilarious :D they put the door opening scenes together with heaps of pictures and videos from some classic moments we've shared over the last three months -fantastic effort guys!

While it is great watching all the memories, it makes the end seem all to near - I have 3 weeks left living here with classes!!! There's 3 weeks away in Linz, Spain and Italy in between, but I am sure that is going to go extremely fast :(

Merry Christmas!

(I think there's alot of Gray in there)

It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas...

2008-12-12T15:33:00.000+08:00

Tonight was the Church Christmas Concert, and it came in the nick of time!

Following the first snow fall, before the official start of Advent, and the initial wanderings through the Christms Markets I had all but forgotten that we were less than three weeks out of Christmas - until Thursday night.

It was a freezing winter night - and right on cue, the snow began to fall shortly before we made our way to the Church. By the time I got back to Puch Thursday night there was a good centimetre covering the ground :D

The Christmas Concert itself was fantastic - carols and candles, a lovely Churchy atmosphere.

The anticipation of singing wintery carols where winter was the reality hit home, and awoke the inner Christmas junkie in me: now its Christmas Carols and anything and everything Christmassy for the next two weeks :D

Ps. Today was Michaela's Birthday - Happy 17th! We had a lovely afternoon tea at the Navis' home (these guys moved here from NZ over the last few months). She received the token sled - hopefully there will be snow to enjoy it in the near future :D

Smurfy!..and Silly Billy Mummy

2008-12-10T18:57:00.000+08:00

Radio X-Stream held their second party this semester on campus - with a theme of Famous Couples/Teams. One bright Erasmus-student thought smothering ourselves in blue paint and wearing white sounded like fun, and found out that Smurfs do just that!

I, being me, wasn't too keen on the blue body paint business - but watching the girls get painted looked like too much fun to miss out on!

We marched two by two from the dorm to Fago, singing the Smurf song...or some kind of song!

The party was fun, but without a doubt the best part of the night was talking to home on Skype.

Somehow I (unintentionally) convinced Mum that I had turned blue because it was so cold..or something...and she began to panic! Dad was in the kitchen, and like me, thought she must have been pretending to panic, but then we realised she wasn't!

Oh dear...I don't know if that says more about my acting skills...or something about Mum....

December Weekend, Swiss Style

2008-12-10T01:57:00.000+08:00

The hard life I lead took another amazing turn this weekend past, with 3 fantastic days in eastern Switzerland. Ditching the trains, as fun as spending twice as long getting somewhere in much less comfort can be, the equation was something like this:

2 Crazy Kiwis + 1 Awesome Aussie + 1 Silly Spaniard + 1 priceless Heidi (our GPS) = alot of fun :D

Saturday moring we were up early - I was up at 4am! For an early start, after saying goodbye to lucky Sandra (who is off to Australia for almost two months). Within the space of an hour we were in 4 different coutnries: Austria, Germany, Switzerland and tiny Lichtenstein - yes, it counts!

Our first stop with Lichtenstein - teeny tiny country with a reasonable castle. We drove up the big mountains behind the castle, an adventure in itself, with almost a foot of snow to trudge through, to find some amazing views and really test out the GPS.

The one thing we were definitely going to do in Switzerland was buy (and eat) good chocolate. With this in mind, our first stop inside Switzerland was the Lindt Factory at Kirchlberg...near Zurich. Lots and lots of pretty cheap Lindt chocolate, along with some free testers. The locals were stocking up big - many people buying hundreds of franks worth of chocolate!

Nachster halt....Luzern! It is safe to say we were all blown away by this little gem. We found our hostel, right on the lake near the Hauptbahnhof, and besides wishing it was summer, instead of the on-and-off rainy couple of degrees we werew being delt, the place was perfect!

For starters the city had a fantastic energy running through it. Old castle walls surround the city on one side, there is a strange wooden bridge, rebuilt to match the period after a 1993 fire....and a cool river with plenty of swans running through the middle. While wandering the streets we came across a brass band playing, christmas markets everywhere, and strange processions of people holding stars followed by people ringing bells dressed in white, followed by Saint Nicholas or something similar - not quite the Austrian Krampus!

On Sunday our destination was Zurich, with an impromptu detour to the delightful Zug - home fo Stefi. The town was buzzing with preparations for something called "Maerli", which seemed to involve fairtales and lamas...I wish we were there later in the day to see more!

Apart from that the town had some awesome statues of funny men above above fountains...

...a pretty Church and Castle, a lovely lake with an amazing, albeit cloudy, view of the surrounding enormous mountains and a bakery with cool cakes and bread in various shapes including a mouse and a man smoking a pipe!

This place goes pretty close to taking the cake as my favourite place we saw in Switzerland....

Soon enough we find ourselves in Zurich..the biggest city we will be visiting this weekend. We are off to a good start, parking our car in an expensive lot when we could get street parking for free, but we are round the corner from the famous Spruglis!

Of course we get some classic truffles - milk, white and dark chocolate - to sample, and boy, these things are amazing!

After this Zurich was a little on the down side with first impressiosn - every pretty historic building was covered in scaffolding or had a crane ruining the view..the weather was cold and there was nothing too fancy to see. But after some walking we came across the older parts of the city - cool little cobbled laneways and tiny walkways along the river redeemed teh city pretty quickly :D

Then..the big winner...some crazy event where teams of people were swimming from one side of the river to the next. Keep in mind that it was only 1 degree outside, if that, and these guys and gals were swimming in speedos...not wetsuits!

After an interesting lunch - some strange pastie type thing with curry (ie Indian style) tofu, coleslaw and tomato - which tasted suprisingly good; we toured the Museum of Modern Art....which was akin to beating a dead horse in my opinion....:P

We rounded out the day by taking our hired Peugeot for some good-ol'-fashioned bush bashing in the dirt roads at the top of the Zurichberg...and finding an amazing view of the city, lake, moon and stars :D

Later that night, after finding our accommodation at Neuhausen, we each had a little turn at driving on the wrong side of the road...and for me, driving a manual for the first time in too many years...but the car was in one piece, so all was good!

Monday goes pretty close to being the best day of the trip -- a late start after sleeping in, then we checked out the Rheinfall by day. Next stop is Shaffhausen - a fantastic castle and overall a lovely historic village with more pretty statues of funny men.

Our final Swiss destination is Appenzell - the best part of this place is the route Heidi takes us on - up and down, round and round snow covered mountains and valleys, with gorgeous views... :D

Pinch and a Punch for the First Day of the Month

2008-12-02T12:08:00.000+08:00

Another month...and what a biggie! I could be referring to November just passed, or December hurtling full speed towards me.

The past week has been quite eventful - in small ways. No new countries or strange languages, but getting into a lovely routine of life - just in time for this life to be nearly over!

Saturday night we saw a Krampus (see here) parade at Gnigl (suburb of Salzburg)...a little disappointing as the Krampus really did just parade through, scaring here and there, but with the barriers and masses of people shorties like me couldn't see much. The Krampus still scared the younguns though - the little kids found their way through the crowd to the front of the barriers, then when the Krampus came and did their thing masses of little kids scurried out like mice desperately searching for their parents!

Friday night was Sandra's going away party - the poor dear is heading to Oz for 7 weeks for a holiday...lucky duck! She's going to have a fabulous time, how can you not in the greatest country on earth? Oz is a popular destination it seems - there's half a dozen different friends with plans to head to Australia in the near future.

Backtracking further Thursday night was Roger's Birthday party - the Kiwi girls hosted a fantastic Mexican dinner. Almost as exciting is what I bought in Libro Thursday afternoon - Gilmore Girls! My theory is that if I watch it in German, or maybe German subtitles, it will count as studying ;) Also good news on the shopping front is that Interspar at Hallein has both rice milk and gluten free pasta....still no nice gluten/dairy/soy free biscuits or sweet things to be found in Salzburg though.

Wednesday was the usual Bible Study day, with Women's in the afternoon and Student's at night, and my first Indigo experience - somewhere decent to eat in Salzburg!

Looking forward - this weekend we are heading to Switzerland, as Monday is a holiday. Lots of Uni work to be done between now and Christmas too, but classes are getting interesting - when I can keep up.

Getting excited about my Christmas plans now too - Christmas with Kat and the fam in Katsdorf, then on to Barcelona for 5 days including New Years - followed by 10 days with the Kiwi girls travelling through northern Italy - it's bound to be a great time :D

After that I come back to finish of the semester for 2 weeks - then it's all over! Time has flown, and I have a bad feeling it's going to go pretty quick between now and then too.

I'm also getting motivated to think about what I'm going to do come January 23. My next (and last!) semester of Uni doesn't start until July - it would be a shame to waste the opportunity of a few months in Europe, to see Spring and then Summer come after the cold, hopefully white Winter.....at the moment the top contenders are getting a Working Holiday Visa for Germany and finding some kind if employment somewhere in that country....or finding a job here in Salzburg and attempting to get a residence and work visa..although I am not sure what that entails at this stage.

Thanksgiving in Snowy Salzburg

2008-11-24T13:33:00.000+08:00

The wonderful white stuff is still around come Sunday - albeit slowly melting away! If the snow's gonna stay, the temperature has to stay low....there'll be more snow later, for now I'm happier for the temperature to rise a little :D The view in Salzburg itself is also benefiting from the white make-over - the mountains and the old town are gorgeous covered in snow.

Today is Thanksgiving Dinner day at Church (Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday) - a sign of the many Americans at the Church, but who's complaining when there's food and fellowship to be had? After helping set up and decorate for the occasion I spend the arvo with Miriam - first off as 'the audience' for a quick practice, then we have a rivetting game of Rummikub :D

Come 4pm we are back at Church - the place smells great, and is buzzing with about 60 people. The food and company is great, especially the dessert. Afterwards there is nice sing-along entertainment from the Icelandic contingent, and later again some more entertainment from the next generation down.

I let my camera loose and get some surprising results - some artistic.....

.....others just a little crazy!

Another wonderful Sunday in Salzburg - made all the more magical by that lovely white stuff!

One Word: Snow!!!

2008-11-23T14:00:00.000+08:00

Not unexpectedly, my predictions for snow by the weekend came true - and in fantastic style!

Friday was a horrible day - freezing cold (literally!) and raining...by the afternoon the rain had turned to sleet, then ice, then snow! The snow lasted only a matter of minutes, but was beautiful all the same.

About 3am Saturday morning (one of the many usual times during the night that my body refuses to adjust to Austrian time for sleeping)...I noticed that instead of green in the gap between the blinds and the floor...it was white! Could it be snow? Yes, and lots of it! Outside the hill and FH were covered in about an inch of white fluffy snow - now I could see what those noisy buggers an hour earlier had been upto, if only I had woken up enough to join them!

Saturday morning I awake to the same glorious white landscape - after a fantastic Skype hook up with all the folks at Bonny Hills - some light entertainment and lots of Hellos, we head out to frollik in the white stuff.

Turns out the snow is just perfect for making snow balls :D The ensuing snow fight is epic - the boys, especially Freddie, dish out the ammunition with precision aim and painful force.

The first snow...only a week out from the start of Advent, seems like a good enough opportunity to start acting likes its Christmas - cue the Christmas music, and later that afternoon we check out the Christmas Markets in the old-town. Italian for dinner (no surprises there) and then a second division ice-hockey game round out the very white wintery day.

Truth be told, the Salzburg team sucked and we were left to make our own entertainment....

On our way out of the ice hockey there is just too much white stuff not being put to good use - another snow fight! This time I am definitely getting better, and actually hit my targets - although not with much force yet, just you wait!

Kesonom Budapest!

2008-11-17T14:41:00.000+08:00

Phew...back home after a hectic 4 days in Budapest!

What a city! A completely new experience in many ways - new currency (spent 10,000 in one day!); totally incomprehensible language (the only thing I learnt was kesonom, pronounced gesonom, which means thankyou!); amazing architecture.....cheap food.

After about 10 minutes in Budapest I realised that this was the first place I had been where I had no way of communicating with the locals. It gave me a new appreciation for the little German that I do know - although I cannot understand much when people talk (although this is improving daily at the moment!) I can string a sentence together...."ist das Zug verspatet?" and get the info I need. Not being able to communicate is such a strange feeling....I now have a renewed enthusiam for learning German, and quickly!

The city of Budapest is just stunning - it is not as clean and well maintained as, say, Vienna, but for me that is the little bit of character that gave the place such a great vibe (it's not dirty...just not glistening!).

We took the long way to Budapest - taking the super cheap option of the Einfach Raus ticket for only regional trains to Vienna, then an early morning Spar Schiene ticket to Budapest...this meant we arrived in Vienna at midnight...and our train didnt leave until 5am! The lack of sleep and need to make our own entertainment made for a fun night - cards and silly antics, including a visit from "Anna Pommie Hands" (fries are called pommes here, and Anna is half British)....

We arrived sleep deprived in Budapest to a cold, overcast day - straight outside the Keleti station are massive roadworks and construction going on and the lady at the tourist office was absolutely downright rude...we had no idea how to get to the hostel, and had no local currency so couldn't catch a bus...not that we knew which one! After an hour and a half...we found our wonderful hostel, and the 'Fantastic Four' almost ready to head out for the day.

First stop was the Heroes Square/Milennium Monument near City Park. Next we went to the Market Hall - cheap fruit, vegetables and bakery goods...and pricey souveneirs. The afternoon was rounded out with a long walk along the main shopping street, ending at the stunning Parlament building..based on Westminster, but I think a bit more impressive. For the Four's last night we (eventually) get to a place just a few doors up from the hostel for dinner, where the cultural dish of Goulash is a popular choice. I order a "potato pie" that ends up being a fantastic potato pancake with vegetables.

After a good night's sleep we hit the city with vigour on Friday morning, although it is another dreary day. The clouds and cold don't ruin the stunning views from Buda (city on the west of the river, Pest being the city on the east). The National Gallery is interesting, and free thanks to a kind security guard. The Matthias Church is under construction (like quite alot of things in Budapest at the moment), so we couldn't see that, but the Fisherman's Bastion was great - with stunning views over the river and Pest.

We round out the day by walking a loop including the Margherita Island. Back on the Pest side we find lamingtons, yes lamingtons, in a little bakery. Rita is absolutely over the moon - she is always telling me that her favourite thing since visiting Australia 8 years ago are lamingtons....and they were pretty good too. Friday night we have another great, cheap dinner at another place up the road from the hostel, then we check out the local 'english pub' before getting some well deserved sleep.

Saturday we awake to a glorious day - woohoo! Blue skies and sunshine all around. After sleeping in we rush to find some breakfast (I get a banana, apple, mandarin and iced tea for 1.50 Euro!) and head out to the Statue Park. This place was set up to house the Soviet era statues, rather than destry them - the idea is good, sadly the execution of the plan looks like they had big ideas, but ran out of money, because it is obviously half finished, but there is no construction going on. There is a succinct display on the Communist era of Budapest and a documentary on the secret police/citizen informers which is very interesting. Bizarre to think that all this only ended 18 years ago.

In the afternoon the others are keen for a spot of shopping - not wanting to waste the great weather outside I do some wandering along the river and touristy part of Pest. We time our climb to the Citadel, on a hill on the Buda side, perfectly to see the glowing orange ball of the sun through the smog quickly descend as we ascend, missing a picture of it by seconds! But no complaints here, the colourful sunset and then the glowing city as it got darker was glorious.

Next stop is the baths - a Budapest specialty. We head to the baths in City Park; after hiring some dodgy swimmers and navigating the change rooms it is clear there is no shame at the baths - doors don't exist in the change rooms!

The baths themselves are fantastic - outdoors, heated to about 37 degrees (and a slightly cooler pool) - they were pretty busy with locals of all shapes and sizes, and especially popular with couples of all ages! As an aside, the idea of "getting a room" is a bit like the fact that "cigarettes cause cancer" here in Europe - foreign ideas; the baths were certainly no exception.

For dinner we head back to the restaurant we ate at on Thursday with the Four - this time it is our turn (excepting me of course) to try the Goulash - we also meet up with Jordi and Alba for this meal. The Goulash is a hit - but it isn't enough to perk up our exhausted bodies; after some ice cream we head to bed, knowing we need to be up when the alarm rings to get our train on time.

Sunday morning we are up bright and early - the weather was bright, but not us! We make the train in reasonable time after the anticipated confusion of changing metro lines, finding a post office and finding some breakfast using up our last Forints. The train ride is uneventful - almost full; along the way getting close to Vienna there are thousands of wind turbines, and with the sunny blue skied day outside it made an interesting site.

We arrive in Vienna with five hours to pass - then a six hour train ride, again taking the super cheap option home. The Christmas markets open this weekend in Vienna - some locations are open as we wander through town, while others are opening in a couple of hours. We get the brilliant idea of using the free city bikes for an hour and cycle around the Parliament, Rathaus, University and Church - a much quicker way to see all the pretty buildings; before heading back to the station and getting on our regional train.

After 5 trains and six hours we get back "home" to Puch Urstein at almost midnight, in freezing rain and utterly exhausted, we are all happy to get back to our own rooms and beds - this is close enough to home for now!

Basicly Budapest was fantastic - I really loved this city. For me it had a lot more atmosphere, and a unique vibe, compared to Vienna. New York is still hard to beat, but London and Budapest are up there for my second favourite city :D

Budapest, Here We Come!!

2008-11-13T08:54:00.000+08:00

In an hour from now we will be on our way to the spectacular capital of Hungary - Budapest! The "we" is two Kiwis, Anna and Kylea, two Portuguese chicks- Joana and Rita, and myself! There we should be meeting up with the 'Fantastic Four' - Anna, Steffi (Swiss), Sandra and Petra (Finn).

The list of "Must-Dos" is long, and we are going to try and cram alot into our three days - certainly not least is spending quality time in the Baths, underground in the Caves and....well, you'll have to check back for what we got up to on our crazy adventures :D

And throw in a day in Vienna on the way back...because we can.

Innsbruck

2008-11-09T14:00:00.000+08:00

This Saturday we headed south-west, to Innsbruck, in the Austrian state of Tyrol. Here the people are Tyroler first, Austrian second, I am told! Once again a beautiful city, old buildings and lots and lots of mountains - no surprises there! Innsbruck is particularly beautiful being in a fairly small valley with enormous mountains surrounding it on all sides.

The Innsbruck crew - clockwise from top left: Daniel (Germany), Jordi (Spain), Javier (Spain), Ivana (Czech), Anna (Swiss), Jakub (Czech), Iman (Germany) and me!

We took the cable car to the top of the Hungerberg - and what a view!

And the famous Golden roof

Overall a lovely day in a beautiful city. Apparently they don't think too much of hookers here:

A drain in Innsbruck old city.

And classy poker chips on the way home -

First Post :D Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

2008-11-06T19:34:00.000+08:00

Well, inspired by the legendary prose being penned by my fellow exchange students (aka Zoe and Freddie!) I have created my own blog for keeping track of the happenings here in Europe. Obviously it is is pretty empty at the moment...and I will be 'back-posting' what I have been up to, especially in London - both for my readers' enjoyment, and for my own benefit, as I find I am quickly forgetting what I have been doing.

The beautiful Autumn weather continues here in Salzburg - sunshine, lollipops and rainbows all around! Yesterday was actually 'hot' in the sun - I am talking 22 degrees hot! Lets hope it keeps up :D The lollipop and rainbow references are a little more obscure -- rainbows featured in a weird dream I had last night, I can't remember the details or the plot...something with taking pictures of a rainbow that kept moving! and the lollipop...well, Mario was sucking one yesterday...so there you go!

Sunny Salzburg

2008-11-03T10:00:00.000+08:00

Back home in Salzburg, after a great night's sleep I manage to drag myself out of bed in time for Church at the Salzburg International Church. Wanted to write a short note on how much I am enjoying going along to this Church on Sundays, and Bible Studies on Wednesdays. The congregation ranges from kids to oldies, with a great group of students - even though they are mostly American :P

The music is fantastic, no coincidence that alot of these guys are music students at the Mozarteum. What is particularly enjoyable is they have alot of the same hymn tunes (but with different words) along with modern songs, all very reminiscent of home (or how home should be).

After Church we have the perfect lazy Sunday - long Sunday lunch followed by coffee in the old city :D

Panaroma from across the river..you can see the steeple.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

2008-11-01T18:24:00.000+08:00

My last day in London town - I was getting used to the normal(ish) food, understanding people and reading newspapers! But I was also very much looking forward to coming 'home' - my bed, my friends, some clean clothes and some warmer weather.

Apparently London didn't feel the same way about me - it was a rainy, miserable...and yes, freeeeeezing day.

I spent the morning on a 'Jane Austen's London' walking tour - with a very knowledgeable guide, supposedly dressed as Jane Austen. This tour was great, although not a whole lot of Austen, there was alot of historical info from that time thrown in and we covered alot of ground I hadn't walked around before. We end up in Covent Garden outside a home where Jane stayed on one occasion.

Taking advantage of my location, and having only an hour or so before I need to head out to the airport I head to GBK for a yummy burger, then the Australian (and Kiwi/SA) shop to see what they've got - here I stock up in Sesame Bars and Cherry Ripes :D (I bought vegemite at the supermarket already). One final purchase before heading home - a pair of trackpants on sale for 10 pound.

Then its tube back and forth to get my bags, head over the Liverpool St for the train to Stanstead, which works out perfect timing. At Stanstead we have the hearbreak moment of the trip.

Apparently, vegemite is, quite obviously, a liquid! Well, that's according to the strict British Airport Security. So my two jars of vege get thrown in the bin, after I had checked a bag in - argh! idiot!

After that traumatic experience, and feeling rotten with a cold, I am pleasantly surprised to find I am taking the same flight home as Gabriele (from the flight to London). The plane is packed with teenage boys on their way home from some kind of school trip, and by this stage they are pretty much out of control. After we arrive I meet Gabriele's sons, and they very kindly drop me home (although I had no idea how to get there by car!).

Wow, what a fantastic time! It's great to be back home though, and I'll be heading to England some time in the future (after I've seen everything in Europe :P), to do all the things I missed out on this time around (especially things out of London).

Any Dream Will Do

2008-11-01T13:00:00.000+08:00

Friday...my second last day in London! By this stage I had barely spent an hour inside any of the wonderful and free museums (the rainy day plan...which I hadn't needed except last Sunday), except the British Museum last night with Paul...so I head over to the Victoria and Albert Museum for the morning.

This glass scuplture is particularly impressive - hanging over the entrance hall. The guide explained that it took a whole week to assemble it, from the pieces that arrived from the artist.

Otherwise lots of wonderful historic things, like Emperor Shah Jahan's Cup and some funky old-school instruments - and some not so useful anymore instruments:

Given the gorgeous (albeit freezing) day outside I head over to Hyde Park. I was surprised how little was going on here - given it was holidays and everywhere else in London was packed, the park was very peaceful and there were very few people around. Not quite as much character as Central Park, and no cool jazz band playing, but it has its good points.

After wandering through the park I end up at Marble Arch, but shopping at this time is not a good idea! The place is absolutely packed. I manage to find my new favourite muesli bars at Marks and Spencer...after an hour of searching (they were hidden, apparently not as popular with anyone except me) but it was worth it! A muesli bar that I can eat...that tastes good and doesn't cost a fortune..amazing!

By now the cold weather and exhausting schedule has taken its toll: my body has all but given in and I am feeling terrible, slightly feverish with a big headache. But..its my last night in London! So ignoring all that I decide to see another musical...surprise!

This time it's Joseph..a great show, obviously aimed at families and kids, and the skill level here is not really on the same level as Chicago or Phantom. The score is alot of fun and the narrator puts in a good performance - Joseph is played by the popular Lee Mead, who either was a bit off tonight or just not that impressive.

Being Halloween there are lots of crazy people in the streets - and people giving out free chocolate bars - yum!

Good Day Sunshine

2008-10-31T13:00:00.000+08:00

Start the day off with another walking tour - this time 'The Beatles' London'. The guide is obviously an absolute Beatles nut, rather than an award winning tour guide. Lots of interesting, and awe inspiring, sites across town and of course, a visit to Abbey Road and a picture on that crossing.
Later the weather turns, and after some exploring of the city by bus I head over to Church House, Westminster to spend the evening with Paul Boyd Lee. It's a great evening with lots of history - bought to life, I must say! I was particularly taken by the information you can glean from the ancient drawings...and their correlation with biblical accounts.

Paul BL

Unexpected Surprises

2008-10-30T05:51:00.000+08:00

So Wednesday was the day I had planned to be in the capable hands of Paul BL, seeing all sorts of wonderful historic things in the west of England, but as already mentioned I instead found myself in London for a beautiful, although freezing day, with small patches of snow confirming that last night was not just a dream!

After buying a ticket for 'The 39 Steps' I decided to take a walking tour (with london walks, walks.com) of Hampstead...not too sure what to expect but it sounded good.

The guide was excellent, and the location beautiful. On the hills out of the city, along with a great mix of history and celebrity residents, it was a great walking tour. The cemetery around the Church was a highlight! Hundreds of gravestones in no order at all...and it was only afterwards that Mum tells me I have an ancestor buried there! Keeping him company is the real family around the Peter Pan story, among other notable names I don't recall.

Famous residents include a former house of Jamie Oliver, house of Ridley Scott, a couple of Spice Girls, a place owned by George Michael....etc! The village is just lovely, a really pleasant place to spend the afternoon. There is also the house that inspired the ship-like home of Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins.

Back in the city I stumble upon the premiere of the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, and get the obligatory London star-siting with Dame Judie Dench.

And then the fantastic 'The 39 Steps': 4 actors play 150 roles (hmmm...more like 30 roles...) in an hilarious performance. The use of the 4 characters is brilliant, on some occassions having conversations with themselves etc, and the kind of humour is typically British.

Back to the Future and 76 Year Miracles

2008-10-29T05:07:00.000+08:00

Tuesday was spent in Bedford -on broadly Church related activities - meeting the people involved with the current research into the Visitation including Justin Meggitt and Gordon Allen.

My host for the day, Gordon Allen, met me at St Pancras where we took an hour long train ride to Bedford, location of the Panacea Society. The day was very interesting and there was alot to discuss, although it was all too apparent that I was not Mum!

They are in the process of setting up a Museum (well, an exhibition), ideally located opposite the Bedford Museum and the John Bunyan Museum; which will include a room on John Wroe.

Coming home the plan was to catch a train out to the home of Paul Boyd-Lee. Unfortunately things got very complicated, the next plan was to catch a bus from Hammersmith, which after all our racing (on a freezing, cold and miserable night) I missed by a couple of minutes!

So I found another hostel for the night (Russell Square...terrible place).

But it all turned out for the best, because this is when the miracle happened:

If you can believe it, there was October snow in London! A beautiful site - and very welcome (for such a short period of time!). This explained the new level of freezing temperatures I had experienced during the day - and for the rest of the week.

All that Jazz

2008-10-28T03:00:00.000+08:00

Abandoning my chronological (and probably tedious!) account of my London adventures, I am jumping straight to today's (and probably the week's) highlight: Chicago. This musical was absolutely fantastic, the script, the plot, the choreography, the actors, the music....the staging, the lighting, the sound, all of it!

Otherwise the day was spent at beautiful Greenwich and travelling back to the city by ferry - a fantastic idea :D taking in the view from the OXO tower and being very cold!

Either side of the prime meridian.

On the ferry ride to the city.

Not so Sunny Sunday

2008-10-27T02:45:00.000+08:00

I wake up to Sunday sticking out its tongue, proving that the beautiful weather so far was too good to be true! I head out to Holy Trinity Brompton (the home of the Alpha course; on Andy's insistent advice!) and enjoy myself immensely. The worship leader here is Tim Hughes (eg. Here I am to Worship) which I didn't realise until afterwards.

Given the rainy weather, and my location it seemed like a good idea to check out the Natural History Museum or the Science Museum. Apparently every family in London had the same idea - so it turned out to be a bad idea! Instead I got some lunch and then headed over to the evening Hillsong service, for the fun of it!

This was some pretty lively worship, to say the least. There was a moving tribute to Gayle Williams, a volunteer killed in Afghanistan that week, who had been active in Hillsong London before heading over to the Middle East (see Link to BBC story).

After this I head north, to a trivia night at 'the Slug' with Pammy and her friend Lynette.

A New Love

2008-10-26T02:33:00.000+08:00

Another beautiful day (although the pictures don't really show this), again starting out with a walking tour. This time the City of London tour, starting at the Tower of London and including St Paul's Cathedral, among other sites. Again, the guide was fantastic - very animated, very knowledgable! Let's see how many people we can fit in a telephone box:

The afternoon is then enjoyed at Camden Markets...where I buy a bag and jacket, some great food and generally enjoy the markets.

Next I head to the theatre - to follow everyone's advice and see a musical. After spending a small (Australian) fortune on a ticket to Phantom of the Opera, I am not too sure what to expect.

But boy was it worth it! Discovered a new love of live musicals :D

A Foggy Day in London Town

2008-10-25T02:20:00.000+08:00

Start off today with a free 'Royal London' tour (with New Europe - excellent tour guides!). Thinking I was free of German speakers for a week...I manage to get an Austrian school group making up most of the tour group.

Unfortunately the Queen wasn't at home, so we had to be content with watching the Guards put on a show - the Changing of the Guard.

But the best part of the day comes towards the end of the festivities - the sun comes out and clouds all but disappear. Yes, blue skies and sunshine in London! (the age of miracles hadn't passed ;)

Lots of interesting places with lots of mostly boring history, although a few interesting stories from the very animated tour guides make up the rest of the morning. The re-enactment of the story behind Guy Fawkes Night was a highlight :D

Lunch and a chunk of the afternoon are spent at Covent Garden (and around that area), taking in some great busker performances while eating a potato with beans and cheese and drinking tea :D At one stage a tight rope walking busker just about kills himself, but walks away unharmed but very shaken.

A twilight walk around the Thames proces spectacular, on the way to dinner and an evening with Pammy (eating at Great Burger Kitchen - yum!).

The London Eye

High Ho, It's Off to London I Go!

2008-10-24T10:00:00.000+08:00

An early start for my morning flight to London (Stansted). Seamless integration of Salzburg transportation - S3 to the Hauptbahnhof, from there Bus 2 to Mozart Airport. The weather was pretty dreary, a good time to be getting away!

The pre/post flight processes at both airports was pretty simple. The flight itself was on time, got a window seat and an empty seat next to me. Sat next to my new friend from south of Salzburg, Gabriele and spent most of the flight chatting.

Got some pounds out of an ATM (I wasn't prepared for just how quickly these would go!) and took the train into Liverpool St Station where I met my London guide for the day - aka Pammy! After a crash course in Oysters, Tubes and Coloured Lines we had some great lunch at the Slug and Lettuce. I was to discover that London has ..alot.. of department stores, that are all huge and all packed, all the time!

Thursday evening we found my host for the night, Oliver. Discovered Brick Lane and places around here along with some good Indian food for dinner.

Most exciting to actually understand the signs, conversations and media going on around me for a change! Advertisements seem to be jumping out at me after I've learned to switch off to them in Austria....and newspapars -- absolutely loving being able to read a newspaper for a week! (and the British journalist have a very entertaining way of writing, not like the good ol' SMH).

Somehow I ended up with no photos from today...but the next few days more than make up for that!

Almabtreib - When the Cows Come Marching Home

2008-10-11T14:30:00.000+08:00

In my Lonely Planet book there is an interesting event in October to see - the bringing home of the cows in the alpine regions. Having no luck finding any information about where and when this will be happening I have given up hope of experiencing it, until late Thursday night. I get a reply from a tourism office, it is happening tomorrow at Koenigssee, at 10am. Having no classes I decide to give it a shot - although I have no idea where this place, and where at this place the Almabtreib is happening.

After an horrific early start (up at 6.30am...!) and a long train ride I get to the Koenigssee, near Berchtesgaden - where I am officially in Germany :D There are very few people around, and no indication that anything is happening. The fog is so thick that it is impossible to know there is a beautiful lake surrounded by massive mountains a few metres away.

By 10am a large crowd has magically appeared - all waiting for something...but we are not sure what. The word goes out that this Almabtreib is special because the cows are arriving by boat across the lake...and they are on the way!

Somehow they timing is perfect, and as the fog starts to clear the boat with the cows appears, making its way slowly towards the waiting family and excited crowd.

The cows are taken off the boat one by one, each given a beautiful headpiece made of flowers, paraded around a loop and given to a family member to control.

When all the cows have been done the family and the cows parade through the town..and then take the long walk home along the highway, with no regard for the traffic!

What a fantastic, quirky event! By now the fog has cleared to reveal the wonderful lake and mountains - and the gorgeous day, so I spend the rest of the day hiking.

Vienna

2008-09-22T13:00:00.000+08:00

Following the Welcome Week four of us decide to head to Vienna for 3 days. Vienna is a beautiful city, many beautiful buildings and gardens. The train takes about 3 hours, and we arrive in Vienna on Friday afternoon.

Friday night we go to the Opera with super cheap standing room tickets - tonight's show is 'The Flying Dutchman'. This was an interesting experience - unfortunately we didn't find the English subtitles until it was almost finished!!

Saturday we go to the beautiful Schloss Schönbrunn, where we take a crash course in Viennese history...and have some fun in the maze!

The Vienna Four - Me, Cherry, Yao Yao and Joo Young.

Saturday evening we explore the city - gorgeous all lit up at night! After dark we head over the famous Ferris Wheel, with a ride on the roller coaster too. The views are beautiful from the top of the wheel, although by this stage my camera is dead - so I have no good pictures!

Sunday is a beautiful, blue sky-ed day - so we head to the park in the morning, and relax while doing some people watching. After a relaxed Brunch we check out the Austrian art in Belvedere, and although art is not at all my thing, I am pleasantly surprised by what we find inside.

After some more exploring of the old buildings and many statues across Vienna we see some huge tents set up around the Parliament - today is election day in Austria, but we cannot gather any info on what is happening. Talking to some Austrian students on the train that night there was some unease at the high number of votes the far right wing parties had received - as an aside, exactly three weeks later the infamous right wing politician Jörg Haider was killed in a car crash.

So far the weather in Austria had been terrible, but today was definitely an exception. Following the past two days of endless walking we are pretty much exhausted, and spend a fair bit of the afternoon relaxing under the sun :D

Vienna has some very classy statues, along with some more unusually placed ones - like this random elephant.

But on a more serious note....

Linz

2008-09-22T12:00:00.000+08:00

My second weekend here in Salzburg I head to Linz, to see Kat and her home - Katsdorf! It is about 2 hours on the train, and when I arrive in Linz the weather is crap - Austria is not being very welcoming in terms of weather or temperature!

Although the weather is not so inviting, from what I see Linz is a beautiful city - many old buildings, much like Salzburg, but without all the tourists! Kat and her friend Kristina meet me at the fancy Linz Hauptbahnhof - the newest train station in Austria ;)

We go for coffee atop a mountain with some nice views over the city - here I am told about some strange customs they have in Austrian weddings!

Over the weekend I meet Kat's parents and sister, see her lovely home and surroundings. The weekend is pretty laid back - although a bike ride was planned on Sunday, we opt for a drive around Kat's place. When we attempt to go for a walk it starts to pour - so after getting drenched we head back for a coffee instead :D

My Room

2008-09-14T08:00:00.000+08:00

After recovering from a good nights sleep on Friday...I was surprised to wake to a horrible day! Rainy, cold and miserable....I was a little worried what I had gotten myself into with the weather in this place. There seemed to be no one around campus...and a trip to IKEA was the logical way to spend the day -- still a popular way to spend a rainy day! (due to a lack of other options).

The beautiful thing about IKEA is that they have the same stuff in Salzburg as they do in Rhodes! And I am used to not understanding the names of things here anyway...! This was a crash course in the value of the Euro/Aussie dollar....but I came home with some essentials (towels, a knife...), along with some cacti, a small rug, a sheet (well, some material in the size of a sheet....they only have fitted sheets in Europe...crikey!) and in the process successfully navigated the trains :D

Although outside was crap, inside my bright-yellow room was all you could want a Uni dorm room to be -- modern and clean, with sheets provided, and although towelless the kitchen was also reasonably equipped.

Number 045..on the lowest floor - this means I have a door to the grass and volleyball courts outisde :D

The kitchen part of the room...

The rest of the room, including the IKEA rug..

Arrival at my Destination

2008-09-13T08:00:00.000+08:00

My journey begins around 12noon on Thursday 12th September, when we finally leave home (about an hour after it was planned) heading down to Sydney Airport. My flight leaves at 3.50pm (Salzburg time 2.50am?). All the usual airport stuff - queueing, getting a dodgy middle seat, tears, saying goodbye, tears, another round of hugs, tears, immigration, security...and then taking off over Sydney.

With a brief stop over in Singapore, I arrive at Frankfurt (about 6am Friday, Salzburg time) with no idea what I need to do to get the train leg of my Qantas journey...but with the help of a steward, who even waits for me in the baggage claim and takes me to the right place...we get it sorted!

The next step is a train change at Munich...which should be pretty simple, and I have 20 minutes to move down about 5 platforms. Somehow...and it is still a mystery...I get the wrong train, heading the opposite direction -- along with 6 other locals -- so I didn't feel quite so silly. We ended up taking the scenic route - twice as long on slow local trians.

Eventually I arrive in Salzburg, about 2pm Friday (I think) to be met by my 'buddy' Johannes - hallejulah! - who takes me to my room and gives me a quick tour around campus, but it is obivous I am pretty dead and looking forward to my bed!

All up 36 hours travelling...from 2am Thursday to 2pm Friday (Salzburg time) - and worth it!

Aussie Nomad - a Year in Mongolia

Mercy Corps Videos

Epically Epic Adventure: Day 1

Social Safety Nets Concert Highlights

Mercy Corps Stories

Chingii

Weekend Getaway: The Desert

I do work, sometimes, honest.

Christmas in Mongolia

The Future of Mongolia

3 Words: Michael Jackson Medley

Arkhangai Province Work Trip

Back in the Big Smoke

Thanksgiving

Adventures in Ulgii

Ulaanbaatar in Autumn

Zuun Mood Felt Cooperative

Home

National Geographic Story on Mongolia

The Best and the Worst

Ah yes, the Project

Successful Projects, and Bowling.

Minties and Fantales?

Welcome Back

Why Mongolia?

Steppe Riders - Take #2

Rain....

There Goes Summer....

More Bayan Olgii Stories

Bayan Olgii

Mongol Derby Funded Projects Map

Mercy Corps' Mongol Derby Projects Promo Video

Hunting Strawberries

Home

Chain Spotting

Russia pics

Two weeks in Russia

No News is Good News

Children's Day - June 1

Russian Jeep Blessing Photos

Warming Up

Ramblings on Mongolian Society

One Month?!?!

Challenges

Second Day at Work

Terelj Trip: Sunday = Horse Riding

Snow in Summer!

Digital Game

The first day of summer...

Food Finds

House Hunting

Arriving in Mongolia!

Fun Stuff from Korea Stopover

Gothenburg

Denmark to Sweden

Things I'm Gonna Miss

Valencia..aka...Valenthia...aka the place where oranges come from!

Austrian Whitish Christmas

Mozarteis...what else would it be in Salzburg?

Advent in Rif

I'm Making a List..and Checking it Twice....

It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas...

Smurfy!..and Silly Billy Mummy

December Weekend, Swiss Style

Pinch and a Punch for the First Day of the Month

Thanksgiving in Snowy Salzburg

One Word: Snow!!!

Kesonom Budapest!

Budapest, Here We Come!!

Innsbruck

First Post :D Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

Sunny Salzburg

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Any Dream Will Do

Good Day Sunshine

Unexpected Surprises

Back to the Future and 76 Year Miracles

All that Jazz

Not so Sunny Sunday

A New Love