Cafe Amsterdam

Thursday morning.  Day off work.  Just finished my first real cup of thick black espresso in 2 months.  Cafe is full of internationals, most with laptops making the most of the free wireless.  Free? well... the coffee's not cheap.

I've got the day off as a 'comp-day' from working a weekend recently.  When I say working I mean Land Cruisering into the countryside to talk to interesting people about our work.  Tiring working through a translater the whole time but its a tourists dream.  We went to a town called Tsetseleg (it means Garden) about 8 hours West of Ulaanbaatar.  There's sealed road for perhaps 70% of the trip and good old off-roading action the rest.  The vistas out in the country are just enormous.  No wonder Chingis Khan and his mates worshipped the land and the sky - thats all there is to see!  There's not the amazing variation like in NZ, just really really biggness.  Discussed some things with a laboratory, herder, vet, herder-group rep, another vet, NGO guy... 
Went to visit a small village about an hour from the town.  Huge day, festivity atmosphere, everyone was out and celebrating.  Its getting to the end of the milking season and so there's a need to celebrate.  Sure I thought.  Its been a good summer here.  How does this rural, traditional village celebrate the changing of seasons?  Something to do with dairy products sounds good.  How about everyone brings their community's best fermented mares milk and has a skulling race?  Sounds like something more favoured by Otago rugby-heads but they pull it off with civility and style.  Fermented mares milk is a slightly sharp, fresh tasting yogurty drink that only contains a small amount of alcohol.  They keep a large vat of the stuff and keep adding fresh milk from the mares (every 2 hours in the peak!).  It keeps really well and everyone's mixture tastes slightly different.  I love the stuff. 
The way it works is that there is nominated a Drinks Master.  This will be the man of the house usually.  He fills a round bowl with airag (the fermented mares milk) to the top and passes it to someone.  they drink as much or as little as they want and pass it back to the Drinks Master.  He fills it to the brim again and hands it to the second person etc.  There is something of an honour to receive it - you must take it with your right hand while your left hand support the right elbow. 

Justus is now officially a Mongolian kindergarten boy. He goes 3 days a week until 1pm and loves it. The language issue doesn't bother him by the sounds. The teachers speak only a few words of english. There's not too many in his class (4 year olds only) but there's cedrtainly a few boys who are just like Justus. He can hoon around going mental and its normal! He is hesitant on the food unfortunately. Nothing too weird - porriage for breakfast and soup or bread for lunch. Seems like he;s just got a mindset of Mongolian food is strange. We're actually finding it great. You can get a nice big lunch or dinner for $2.50-3. My favourite right now is an eggy fry-up with capsicum, onion, meat (of course), rice, spud, salad. Usually they provide traditional Mongolian hot tea with it. There's a market 5-10 mins away which Belinda really likes. Good prices, fresh veges, friendly stall owners to practice Mongolian with. I think veges will go up in price soon with winter on its way.

On the topic of work things are still going very well. Sounds like I've landed on my feet compared to many other VSO people. Actually feels like I'm an intern in an organisation that has really got it together. Of course there's problems - we're in a developing nation - but I'm learning pretty efficiently how to deal with them. Much better than doing a Masters thesis perhaps!

Temperatures are pretty similar to NZ still. We might have a 2 degree night and a 12-20 degree day. October will certainly see a big drop in average temp though. Ironically I'm too hot most of the time. The office must be at least 25 degrees and home not much less. The state run heating system works pretty good.

The big world with some Hamlins

Mongolians really know how to ride horses.  And unlike New Zealanders they hardly ever fall off.

When a good idea goes horribly wrong:  High protein snack, keeps forever, tastes like vomit.  Its made from off-milk so no surprises I suppose

The cheapest basic fast food in the world perhaps.  Buuz.  Quite nice savouries if you can handle a bit of oil.