Yesterday was an incredible, wonderful, amazing day. We did & saw so much that it will probably take several posts before I tell the whole story. The park is 347 square miles of wildlife preserve, situated in a valley bordered by mountains and the Tuul river. We saw gazelles, red deer, Altai sheep, vultures, magpies, domestic Mongolian horses and the Takhi. Zachnaa, the manager of the UB office of the International Takhi Group that Jasmin works for, took us to the park and drove us around. A quick word about Zachnaa: he is multilingual and a very friendly man. He had to learn Russian in school, lived in Germany for 2 years in connection with his job with ITG, and speaks English, as well as Mongolian, of course. The park is beautifully preserved - there are no paved roads, and of course, no hunting is allowed, so the animals live as naturally as possible within its borders. The animals are not spoiled by human contact, nor are they obviously scared of us, so it was easy to get somewhat close to them, but if you come too close for their comfort, they flee.
Because there are no fences or barriers to the park, domestic herds sometimes stray into the area, especially because there is such good grazing there. So, in addition to the list of park residents above, we also saw domestic sheep and goats.
We were fortunate enough to be able to meet the director of the park, Bandi, who spoke to us at length. I asked him what his goals for the park were and he mentioned several, including ecotourism and continued cooperation with the neighboring herders. They are doing a lot to win the support of the people in the community, including educating them about traditional crafts they can develop for sale (felting is big here) and showing them how to plant potatoes and other vegetables. I asked him if the people collected the manure for use on their gardens, but neither he nor Zachnaa knew the word. I looked to Jasmin for help in explaining it, ran through a couple of synonyms in my head - quickly discarding "excrement" and "poo" - and the only word I could come up with was "scheiss", which luckily everyone understood. Naughty words get the message across when traditional learning fails!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Yesterday afternoon with Jasmin
Yesterday Jasmin and I walked to Sukhbataar Square, which is right in front of the government building. The square is named in honor of Sukhbataar (or Sukhbaatar, the spelling differs), who was a military hero from the 1921 revolution against China. For a while Mongolia was part of Manchuria, and then broke away before it was incorporated as part of the USSR. Sukhbataar means "axe hero" in Mongolian. From there we walked to the State Department Store, since those 2 are the only places I can find in UB. She did a little souvenir shopping and I bought yet another electric cord. I'm still trying to get my netbook charged: there are so many connections and plug types to consider - but I think I've finally got the problem solved.
We also did some grocery shopping at the dept. store. There is a large food dept. on the first floor of the dept. store, much bigger than my Minii, so we had fun looking at things and seeing how different things are packaged. For example, you can buy mayonnaise in a jar, just like at home, but you can also purchase it in a bag, in a squeeze tube, or in something like a juice box.
By the way, there are no coins in Mongolia. There are bills for everything, even down to a 10 togrog note, which would be worth about .7 cents. Not 7 cents, mind you, .7 cents. Prices can be scary here, although on closer inspection, they are quite reasonable. It's just that seeing something with a price tag of 12,000 togrog takes a moment to absorb. Generally I lop off the 3 right-hand digits, and then work on the premise that one dollar is about 1.5 togrog (actually, it's 1.46 togrog). If $12 doesn't scare me for the 12,000 togrog item, then I know that the price is actually much less than that.
After our shopping trip, we tried to catch a taxi home, but were unsuccessful. I don't know if the traffic was just too busy, and all the cabs were taken, or if we were standing in the wrong spot (although we were shown where to stand), or if there were just no cabs in the area. It is very difficult to identify taxis here. None of them seems to have the triangular sign on top that we are used to, so we aren't sure what went wrong. Anyway, we had to walk all the way back to the apt., carrying our precious cargo with us, and of course, we had bought bottles of water and juice and soda. We were exhausted by the time we got home and in spite of our original idea to fix a proper meal at home, we just ate some salad and rolls and went to bed.
The big news: We are taking off tomorrow for Khustain Nuruu National Park where some of the Takhi are located. I'm hoping to get some good photos. I won't be posting to the blog in the morning (my morning), but may be able to do it at night, although I don't know exactly when we'll be returning. So it may be Friday morning (your Thursday night) before I can deliver my Takhi Update report. Khustain Nuruu park is about 100 km from UB; I've been told it takes about 2 hrs to get there by jeep.
We also did some grocery shopping at the dept. store. There is a large food dept. on the first floor of the dept. store, much bigger than my Minii, so we had fun looking at things and seeing how different things are packaged. For example, you can buy mayonnaise in a jar, just like at home, but you can also purchase it in a bag, in a squeeze tube, or in something like a juice box.
By the way, there are no coins in Mongolia. There are bills for everything, even down to a 10 togrog note, which would be worth about .7 cents. Not 7 cents, mind you, .7 cents. Prices can be scary here, although on closer inspection, they are quite reasonable. It's just that seeing something with a price tag of 12,000 togrog takes a moment to absorb. Generally I lop off the 3 right-hand digits, and then work on the premise that one dollar is about 1.5 togrog (actually, it's 1.46 togrog). If $12 doesn't scare me for the 12,000 togrog item, then I know that the price is actually much less than that.
After our shopping trip, we tried to catch a taxi home, but were unsuccessful. I don't know if the traffic was just too busy, and all the cabs were taken, or if we were standing in the wrong spot (although we were shown where to stand), or if there were just no cabs in the area. It is very difficult to identify taxis here. None of them seems to have the triangular sign on top that we are used to, so we aren't sure what went wrong. Anyway, we had to walk all the way back to the apt., carrying our precious cargo with us, and of course, we had bought bottles of water and juice and soda. We were exhausted by the time we got home and in spite of our original idea to fix a proper meal at home, we just ate some salad and rolls and went to bed.
The big news: We are taking off tomorrow for Khustain Nuruu National Park where some of the Takhi are located. I'm hoping to get some good photos. I won't be posting to the blog in the morning (my morning), but may be able to do it at night, although I don't know exactly when we'll be returning. So it may be Friday morning (your Thursday night) before I can deliver my Takhi Update report. Khustain Nuruu park is about 100 km from UB; I've been told it takes about 2 hrs to get there by jeep.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Jasmin
Jasmin arrived yesterday afternoon and she is GREAT! She was brought to the school before my day ended, but she was very happy to be able to sit down at my desk and check her email & facebook and wait until I was through for the day. We walked down the street and stopped in at the landmark restaurant BBQ Chicken and had dinner. We arrived at the apt. and I gave her the 30-second tour, including the bathroom pipes, the heating pipes that you have to step over to enter the apartment and the lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. We talked about her project with the Takhi, her grandmother from Portland, ME, now living in Germany (with her German grandfather), my great-grandfather's military service in Hannover, our dogs, music and anything else you can imagine. She's so friendly and easy to talk to. She's trying to arrange a daytrip out to see the Takhi this week, so we'll see if that happens. We also have plans to get together this afternoon for a little sightseeing and then I've promised to take her to the Minii to go shopping for dinner. I also showed off my puppies to her this morning.
Having a great time!
Having a great time!
Asking questions
One of the teachers here is pregnant, and since I brought a lot of yarn with me, I thought I'd knit something for the baby. I asked one of the other teachers if there were any superstitions regarding baby gifts (I was thinking specifically that it might be considered bad luck to buy things for the baby or to give a gift before the birth) and was assured by 2 teachers that "no, there are no superstitions about baby gifts." I said "great" and turned back to my blog-writing, only to be told next that there were no superstitions EXCEPT that you don't give baby gifts before the baby is born. Good to know, I said to myself. In case you're wondering, I had given a lesson on superstitions in class the previous week, and had elicited examples of Mongolian superstitions from the teachers' class during it, so I knew they knew what superstitions were.
I also gave a lesson about idioms last week, and gave many common examples, but the one example that consistently brought a smile to every face was "birthday suit". The first guess on the meaning of it was always a nice outfit, or one's best clothing, so when I asked them to think about what they were wearing on the day they were born, huge smiles came out across their faces.
I also gave a lesson about idioms last week, and gave many common examples, but the one example that consistently brought a smile to every face was "birthday suit". The first guess on the meaning of it was always a nice outfit, or one's best clothing, so when I asked them to think about what they were wearing on the day they were born, huge smiles came out across their faces.
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