Fun conversations I’ve had in Mongolian lately.

Mongolian Gentleman: Hey, see that guy over there? [pointing to his friend] He’s a good guy.

Me: …Okay.

MG: You’re a good guy.

Me: Thanks.

MG: [to his friend] Hey, he said “thanks”! Hahaha! [to me] Where do you work?

Me: [pointing vaguely in my office's direction] I work there. And…what do you do?

MG: I’m about to take a bus to the city. That guy…that guy’s a good guy.

Me: …

MG: I’m a good guy. The three of us are good guys.

Me: Yes, we’re three good guys.

MG: Hahahahaha!

Me: Okay, I have to go now. My wife is coming.

Me: How much are these?

Lady selling green onions: 1000 tugrugs for a bunch or 1500 by weight. [I don't understand the last part.]

Me: Sorry, what’s 1500?

LSGO: [points to the scale] 1500 if you want to get a different amount.

Me: Oh, okay. I’ll take one of these bunches.

LSGO: My child*, do you need a bag?

Me: No, that’s okay, I have a bag. [I start fumbling around with several bags of vegetables that I already bought.]

LSGO: Here, grandma will help you. [Grandma helps me.]

Me: Thanks!

Kid: [to friend] Hey, a Russian person!

Me: Not a Russian person. An American person.

Kids: [reaction 1: hysterical or nervous giggling; reaction 2: dropped jaw]

Me: Hello!

Customs Lady [a mid-50s, mirthless woman in a militaristic uniform]: …

Me: Where can I put this? [gesturing to USPS box]

CL: [points to a chair]

CL: What’s in it?

Me: [misunderstanding the question, which in most contexts means "What's up?"] Oh, nothing.

CL: …

Me: Umm…[pointing to customs list] there are magazines.

CL: Heh?

Me: Uh…magazines?

CL: WHAT?

Me: [attempt to pronounce the word a couple other ways]

CL: What kind of magazines?

Me: What kind? [why is she asking this?] OH! Not bad magazines! Haha…ha?

CL: What else.

Me: Face lotion.

CL: Are you going to sell it?

Me: No, it’s for my wife.

CL: Hmmph. What else.

Me: [oh jeez, how do I say 'cookie cutters' in Mongolian?] …

CL: [seeing my panic] Take it.

Me: We’re done?

CL: …

Me: Thanks!

Two-sentence summer recap: Katie and I were trainers for the incoming group of volunteers. Then her parents came.

And then we got back to work at our site. So first, I should say that volunteers in the Community Economic Development sector here (and health, and youth development, the other non-TEFL* project sectors) tend to have less clearly-defined roles than English teachers do, when it comes to work at their host country agency (HCA). The good thing about that is that most non-TEFL volunteers have more control over what kind of work they end up doing, depending on how their interests and skills fit in with what their agency is looking for from a PCV. On the other hand, if you’re not an English teacher, it can take longer to figure out what your role should be at your HCA. You just don’t fit into daily work life as easily as a teacher at a school does.

All of this is meant to rationalize the fact that my progress in contributing to economic development in Mongolia has been…underwhelming. One of my goals in my remaining time is to improve member services at my HCA, the Chamber of Commerce. It’s challenging to organize quality services with our tiny staff. And I haven’t found much evidence that Mongolian businesspeople are interested in networking luncheons, which apparently is the type of thing American Chambers do. So we’ve got to figure some things out.

Most of my time at my HCA has consisted of working with my individual counterparts on their everyday tasks: teaching an Excel trick once in a while, helping to edit an English translation, advising them on how work responsibilities should be assigned. It’s taken me a while to come to grips with the fact my work situation is not quite right for the fabled Big Grant-Funded Project — but that’s not to say we won’t collaborate on bigger things over my last 10 months.

What else? I’ve got some worthwhile secondary work going on.

I started a website for the community English classes we do with the other PCVs here. We’ve been getting 20 or 30 participants each night lately.

Katie and I also recently started going to a local orphanage to play games and teach a little English to the kids there. Even though there is no sustainability/capacity building component to this (big Peace Corps concepts), it’s a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

A bigger issue I’m trying to work on is promoting volunteerism, which is Peace Corps’ V2 initiative:

Multiplying the Power of Service

What if each Peace Corps Volunteer was the catalyst for 10 community volunteers who were committed to making their communities a better place?

What if those 10 new volunteers—men, women, boys, and girls—were, in turn, inspired to mobilize an additional number of people committed to giving back to their town or village through service?

Think of how your actions can spark a multiplying effect—an exponential increase in service—that creates long-term change in your community!

…which sounds great in theory but is pretty challenging to put into practice. One of the lessons you quickly learn as a PCV is that developing countries don’t have a lot of people with spare time for volunteering. I’ve got a couple inchoate ideas that I don’t want to jinx by talking about just yet. But hopefully there will be some positive developments in that realm that I can report here before another 5 months have gone by between blog posts.

*Teaching English as a foreign language.

Some things I’d like to point out about this video:
- Mongolian news anchors read from laptops right in front of them instead of a teleprompter.
- This was a lesson about family, so you’ll see a partial diagram of my actual family members. If you are one of my actual family members, see if you can spot yourself! Then tell me if you had fun playing this game.
- I swear there is actual student participation in my classes. This camera crew didn’t stick around for that part, so you’ll mostly see me just talking at the students.
- My Mongolian colleagues helped me with some of the voiceover translation. We went through it once and I jotted down notes, then tried to fill in the blanks later on my own. As you’ll see, I was not entirely successful.
- A technical note: after much fiddling around with video conversions, I ended up using Youtube’s subtitle feature that lets viewers turn captions on or off. If you don’t see subtitles by default, use the arrow button in the lower-right corner and click the CC button. And if they’re too small, go to the full Youtube page for larger text.

My contribution for Tsagaan Sar is the video evidence. You will recognize some folks from Katie’s pictures — they’re the family of one of the teachers she works with. You’ll see a big stack of pastries covered with dairy products (tsagaan idee, white food). And you will see me eat a buuz (“boats”).

Happy year of the rabbit!

Eye of Wisdom isn’t a cult, it’s the school where Katie and I teach English together.

My feeble attempt to paraphrase the school director in the video: “The Human Development Center offers English lessons and other training. We want to wish everyone in Erdenet a happy new year.”

In other news, Chinggis Claus came to town.

So there you go. Happy holidays, everybody.

So what have I been doing, anyway? I’m glad you asked. Let’s run through the highlights of my early experiences in Erdenet:

The Russian Sales Pitch: My first visit to Erdenet Mining Company (aka the reason this city exists) was to see a product demonstration by a Russian mining equipment manufacturer. The potential buyers were from a company based in Ulaanbaatar, and my director and I were along for the ride because…well I don’t know why. The interesting part of the day wasn’t watching the mineral detection machine in action, but rather the reception afterwards, which consisted of a lot of mutton and many vodka toasts. Everybody there — the Russians and Mongolians and one Australian guy — celebrated this glorious new piece of mining technology and the prospect of doing business together. I was starting to think I would have to give a speech too, but then my director made his move to leave and I went with him. Kind of a shame, really.

Yeah, find that copper.

The “Alternative Finance Forum”: Organized and hosted by my agency (OBCCI, the Orkhon/Bulgan provinces’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry), this was an event where lending institutions gave presentations to small business owners. My main contribution was taking pictures. There were some finance students from the Erdenet branch of the National University of Mongolia volunteering as ushers. I met one who spoke decent English, and she agreed to be a Mongolian language tutor for Katie and me. She’s been working with us once or twice a week.

Marketing Training from a Real Live American Marketing Professional: Yes, that’s me. A guy asked me to present some case studies on marketing plans as part of a two-week training he was conducting for local business people. The request was pretty vague, which made it difficult, but I was happy to get the opportunity to do some business-related work, which had been slow to materialize. The first session I attended, I was expecting to have a short Q&A where I’d get to hear about what kind of business problems the participants had. Instead, everybody looked at me and my interpreter asked me, “What would you like to talk about?” So I had to wing it, and spent the next two hours giving a meandering talk on marketing strategy and the importance of choosing a target market. I think it went okay. I was better prepared for the second session.

English Classes: A teacher from Erdenet’s “Human Development Center” asked me to teach at her school. She normally teaches English grammar and she wanted a native speaker to do a conversation class. Katie and I have been teaching the class together once a week, and we also had our first “English Movie Night” there last Friday. The idea is to show a chunk of a movie and then stop to ask the students questions about the plot and some of the language they heard. We did the first half of The Goonies this time, and it was much more successful than the worst-case scenario I had prepared myself for. I was worried it would totally bomb due to people not understanding enough dialogue. Pretty sure including subtitles (in English) was the key. Other films we’re considering for upcoming installments include Big, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. I’m pretty pumped about this.

I also taught a few English lessons at the local government office, but that fizzled out after just a week. I’m continuing to work with my counterparts (Peace Corps term for your co-workers at your agency) on their English, both through formal lessons and informal, everyday workplace interactions.

Trip to Darkhan: I spent a Sunday in Darkhan, about a two-hour drive away, with the other two guys from my office.

This 50-foot scrap metal guy greets you on the way into Darkhan.

We went to the “Darkhan Partnership” trade fair to recruit businesses for our own trade fair, planned for the following weekend. I got to meet the staff of Darkhan CCI and, naturally, take several shots of vodka with them.

Which leads me to…

“Erdenet Partnership”: Businesses from Erdenet and surrounding provinces set up booths to showcase their wares for three days at our trade fair. This is one of the biggest events organized by OBCCI each year.

I love the smell of commerce in the morning!

Once again, I had a very minor role in organizing and running the event, and once again, from my perspective the event itself was overshadowed by the banquet that followed. You can probably guess what went on there (hint: vodka). But more notable, and probably deserving of its own section here, was…

My First Real-World Mongolian Waltz: The trade fair banquet featured waltzing by a crew of high school kids (I think?) hired as entertainment. The floor was then opened up for the rest of the attendees. Now, Peace Corps was kind enough to give us some Mongolian waltz exposure during pre-service training, but I was kind of hoping I’d never be forced to actually do it. But lo and behold, a nice young lady held out her hand asking me to dance, and how could I say no? And boy, it was exactly as awkward as you’d imagine if you’ve ever seen me dance. Katie was spared from the waltz, but she did hit the dancefloor once the DJ transitioned to pop music. It’s funny: a lot of Mongolians can waltz their asses off, but let them go freestyle and they tend to just stand in a circle and sway back and forth.

The Mongolian waltz in action

IT Consulting?: Somebody from the Peace Corps office emailed saying that a guy from the mining company had asked for PCV assistance with some database work. I don’t know much about databases, but I met with him to see if there was anything I could do. It seemed strange that this huge company (by Mongolian standards) was seeking volunteer assistance. I’m going to help them try to hire a consultant, since this project is likely to require at least a few months of work. I am also trying to track down some database planning information that they can read — they have some engineers/programmers who can understand English. I’m getting some long-distance assistance from fellow PCV Danny out in the east end of the country.

What’s next? I’ve been getting more integrated into my office’s daily operations, and we’ll be working together on organizational planning for the next few weeks. We need to map out and design the training courses we plan to offer in 2011 (topics like how to write a business plan). I’m encouraging my counterparts to get more feedback from CCI members to make sure we’re planning services that they want.

Maybe I should also put some more time into practicing the waltz.

So nobody chanted for it to happen, but I did write and give a speech in Mongolian at our swearing-in ceremony last month (as did three of my fellow PCVs).  The beginning isn’t in the video, so read this first:

“Hi, my name is Ryan.  My wife and I will be volunteers in Erdenet.

In my opinion, it was hard to leave America.  I had to say goodbye to my friends and family.

Mongolia was a new country to me: new people, a new language, and new food.

Well, my Peace Corps group came to Mongolia.  First, we went to Ulaanbaatar by plane…”

And the rest:

There were dance and music performances, too.  One of the biggest crowd-pleasers was John and Andrew (with assistance from Sarah) playing a traditional Mongolian song with an American twist:

(This is Jason’s video.  I recorded it too but haven’t uploaded it.)

So even if I accomplish nothing else in my time here, I can at least say that I addressed a crowd of Mongolians and spoke intelligibly enough for them to understand me.  This is the hard part, though: continuing to learn the language now that I don’t have four hours in the classroom every day.  You might be thinking that living in Mongolia is like being in a big language classroom every day.  Well, you’re wrong!  It turns out that foreign language acquisition by osmosis is not an effective method, at least not as an adult.  I’ve been trying that strategy.  My arbitrary three-week coasting period is over, so now I’ve got to get cracking again.  Yesterday I met Erdenet’s mayor, a former wrestler, and promised him I’d speak decent Mongolian by 2012.  So there’s that motivating factor too.

A few weeks ago our training class swore in and then we all got shipped off to our respective sites.  If you are truly interested in my life, then you will have read the previous post and looked up Erdenet on Wikipedia, or something.  Here’s some more info about our situation for the next two years.

WORK: I’ve been placed with the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  I spent the first couple weeks looking through their materials, getting introduced to some of the local NGO and government workers, and teaching English to the Chamber staff.  The English lessons will probably be ongoing, and I will be getting involved with the planning and execution of upcoming events like training sessions and next month’s trade fair.

THE APARTMENT: As I alluded to last month, we’re not roughing it.  We have hot water, heat, home Internet access, and plenty of space.  But before you scoff at our posh setup, consider that we have had some fly and mosquito problems and our bed is falling apart.  See, we’re not totally pampered.

THE CITY: Erdenet is big by Mongolian standards, but most of the city is laid out along a single street.  You can walk across the main part of the city in 25 minutes.  Still, there is access to a lot of food and shopping.  There’s even pizza delivery available.

Erdenet was built because of the copper mine here, which still drives the city’s economy.  It plays a major part in the national economy too, but that will change in the coming years as even bigger mining projects get underway.  The mining company is jointly owned by the Mongolian and Russian governments, and about 500 Russians work there and live in town.  As a result, people here often assume Katie and I are Russian.

It’s not the Peace Corps experience that I expected when we first started applying, but I’m not complaining.

We got our site assignment this week: Erdenet. It’s the second- or third-largest city in the country, built about 40 years ago because of the big copper mine there. I will expand on this more later, but we will not be lacking much in the way of amenities.

Tomorrow we will swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers, and we’ll travel to our site on Saturday. That’s all for now. Off to explore UB some more.

I decided to pull out the Lonely Planet Mongolia book and look up some of the cities/provinces where I suspect Katie and I might be headed to.  The only positive result of this is that I’ve become slightly more informed about some places in Mongolia.  It was particularly satisfying when it helped me answer a trivia question.  There’s a Mongolian TV game show called “AXA” (pronounced a-ha), which stands for “question answer question.”  My host mom was watching it the other day, and the kids were downstairs.  She yelled down to them, “Which province was Chinggis Khaan born in?” and I piped in from the other room with the (assumed) answer, Khentii.  I then proceeded to pat myself on the back both for understanding the question and knowing the answer.

Right now I’m hoping that I’m reaching the end of a days-long bout of intestinal disorder.  Mongolia seems to get a kick out of putting newcomers through this twisted brand of hazing.  Despite my general lack of appetite, though, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat some pizza and onion rings yesterday.  We had a “host family appreciation day” wherein the trainees cooked American food, and I’ll tell you what, we did a damn fine job.