Christmas in Mongolia

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 :)