Sports

I competed in a Mongolian swim meet three weekends ago. My friend from work, who swam for his University in the US, asked if I wanted to participate. I thought it would be a good incentive to work out and get back into shape, but I only got in one 30 minute workout before the big day. 

There were two events, the 50 m breaststroke and 50 m freestyle. My friend and I got first and second in both races. I had a time of 34 seconds in the breaststroke and 27.5 in the freestyle. I was actually surprised by my freestyle time, considering I had done almost no physical activity in over three months. The most interesting part of the swim meet was the ceremonies. They had an opening ceremony and awards/closing ceremony. They were the most official swimming ceremonies I had ever seen, it felt like I had won a world championship. In fact, even the US Nationals has less pomp and flair then this meet. In the closing ceremony, all the athletes processed out and lined the pool deck, there were officials dressed in white uniforms, some officers dressed in military uniforms, cameras taking video, FINA posters, a podium with a giant picture of Michael Phelps... It was pretty awesome. I also won 80,000 tugrugs (about 60 bucks) and a free gym membership. It was quite a rewarding experience haha.

In other sports related news, I have been playing basketball every Tuesday night with my co-workers. There is a gymnasium inside the Ministry building that houses our office, and we rent out time there starting at 8 o'clock. Its been really fun but I still suck at basketball...nothing has changed since my middle-school days. I bought some baller b-ball shoes at the black market for 20 bucks, so at least I look good when I play. We usually play for about three hours, so its a pretty good workout. I usually take a thirty minute break in the middle to teach a yoga class to my female co-workers in the corner. That is all...for sports in Mongolia.

Skiing at Sky Resort (UB)

Went skiing two weeks ago at the Sky Ski Resort about 40 minutes from the center of Ulaanbaatar. This was my first time skiing in over eight years and I didn't know what to expect. I was very surprised to find that I hadn't forgotten how. After just a few minutes I felt very comfortable.

Sky resort is pretty nice. I paid only 25,000 tugrugs, about 20 dollars, for three hours of skiing. This included boots, skis, poles and lift tickets (good deal). My friend and I were able to stay out for 4 hours, because no one checked our lift tickets. There are three main skiing slopes at Sky, a baby hill, an intermediate and an advanced.  Not much variety but still a lot of fun. I spent most of my time on the intermediate hill and had one go at the advanced. The best part was I didn't fall! Probably because I was being very cautious.

My only complaint was the temperature. It was absolutely freezing on the mountain, around negative 40 degree Celsius (about -40 F). To illustrate, on my first run down the mountain I didn't wear my face mask and when I got down I had a layer of ice covering may face and an ice sickle running down from my nose. At first I was just wearing jeans and two layers of long johns on my legs, but after just an hour I had to go inside and rent snow pants for 6,000 tugrugs, about 4 dollars. By the end of the four hours my feet and hands were numb, even with two layers of socks, hand warmers and mittens. When I first took off my skii boots my feet were so cold I couldn't move my toes. The process of defrosting was pretty painful and my fingertips were very sensitive for about twelve hours after finally warming up.

After skiing we had lunch in the cafeteria. The cafeteria food was very expensive compared to food in UB, but thankfully my co-worker's wife brought along stuff to make sandwiches. For instance, the hot chocolate was 4,000 tugrugs (3 dollars), which would pay for a whole meal in UB.


In conclusion, even though it was friggin freezing, the trip was still worth it. I had forgotten how fun skiing was and I am really excited to go again when I'm back in the US, somewhere where the temperature is warmer. 

Week Khoyor: babies, brawls, burgers and fries

View of Blue Sky Tower out of my bedroom balcony window

I haven't written here in a while and quite a bit has happened since my last entry. First off, I have settled into my Guest House quite nicely. My first Saturday morning I woke up to eggs, beans and sausage kindly cooked by my dear landlady Natsaga. I've also hooked up my Playstation 3 and am enjoying Assassin's Creed Brotherhood on the weekends (I've rebuilt nearly 50% of Rome thus far).  In the evenings before bed I've started reading Ender's Game, an awesome book by Orson Scott Card. Shout out to Kelly Devine for gifting it to me.

During my first weekend in UB I went out with the Peace Corps volunteers who were staying at the guest house. It was a volunteer's birthday and we celebrated by going to a very good Indian/Mexican restaurant called Los Bandidos. I ate chicken curry and naan bread, and it was delicious.  After dinner we went to a club where it was salsa night.  I have been to Mexico and Puerto Rico, but I ended up learning salsa in Mongolia.  After salsa we went to karaoke, which is not my favorite thing to do, but I endured what seemed like endless hours of terrible singing.  


I met my first Mongolian baby last week. The baby was introduced to me by one of my favorite co-workers Uyanga, who took me to a restaurant called Aura where we met up with the baby and its mother. The Mongolian baby is a very big baby compared to most other babies.  He was clearly well fed and very cute. He slept on the table almost the entire lunch.  Just as we were finishing he stirred, awoke from his peaceful slumber and began crying for food. Thats when it got a little awkward, so I went and stood by the door while the mother breast-fed the Mongolian baby.

As I was standing at the door I heard a commotion outside. I looked and saw a man in a light purple sweater attacking a group of women.  I stood there wondering how I should react.  I thought, should I be the passive bystander who watches such events but does not do anything to help? Well, the decision was made for me when I realized that these women were actually my co-workers. I rushed over to the scene where the man had locked his hands around one of my co-worker's wrists. Me and the other ladies tried to pry the man off of her, which took a good two or three minutes.  Then I learned never to mess with Mongolian woman. Once freed, my co-worker actually went after the guy and we had to hold her back.  She even picked up a piece of piping and tried to whack him with it.  Fortunately though, the violence was quelled and we departed the scene.  I learned later that the man had been driving and almost hit them as they walked across the cross-walk, a quite common occurrence in Mongolia. The problem started when she kicked the guys car and he got out and hit her.  What an eventful lunch hour! 

A burger and cola from AB&F

More recently I've been going out to dinner a lot.  Last weekend I went to Namaste at the Flower Hotel, an Indian/Pakistani/Desi restaurant far to the east of Sukbaatar, near the American Embassy.   I went with PCVs Leon, Katie and Aaron (or Erin idk). I had another Indian chicken dish with naan bread and a Mango Lasi. This weekend I went to American Burger and Fries (AB&F) no less than three times. Once with a PCV staying at the guest house who happened to share my last name. She was convinced we were related somehow. AB&F serves a burger that tastes exactly like burger king's, along with other American favorites like NY strip steak, chicken tenders, and nachos.  I found that it is a great place to meet English-speaking expats. Whilst there I met many people, including an eighteen year old English lad from Devon who I was very impressed by.  He is here on his own working for a medical charity while he waits to hear the outcome of his University applications. I really hope he gets accepted to King's College (X-ing-fingers).


At work I was lucky to have the opportunity to work on investment teasers last week. I researched some reports and feasibility studies on specific development projects and then wrote short and enticing summaries to be sent out to major investment banks like Morgan Stanley and the Kuwait Investment Authority. I wrote one for a Hydroelectric project in Shuren and another for an initial investment in the first two phases of the national railway project.

You don't have to wait for July to see fire works.  Just come to Ulaanbaatar where they set them off every Thursday night right outside my bedroom window!

Mongolia. week neg.

For starters, neg means one in Mongolian.  After being in Ulaanbaatar (UB) for one week, I am starting to feel pretty comfortable.  I have moved into a private room at the Steppe Guest House.  The guest house is across the street from the central post office, next to the Russian embassy and right on the southwest corner of Sukbaatar Square (which translated means axe-wielding hero square). The square is at the center of the city and it has the Parliament building, the state opera, a museum and a larger than life statue of Chengis Khan (yes its Chengis not Ghengis and don't be caught mis-pronouncing that in front of Mongolians or the they'll send the horde after you).

Chengis Khan!

View of parliament building and the square on my way to work

The guest house is very comfortable and it has everything you could need, including a tv, shower, laundry service, fully equipped kitchen, and the occasional peace corps volunteer to hang out with when your bored.  The landlady, Natsaga, is probably the nicest person in UB.  She loves foreigners and she and her aunt clean regularly and occasionally make food for the guests.  I highly recommend this place.

There is lots of stuff to do in UB.  The city has lots of restaurants, bars and clubs.  My second night here I went to BD's Mongolian BBQ on Seoul Street near the circus.  I went with everyone from the bank and the occasion served as a goodbye dinner for the two departing interns and a welcome dinner for me.  The restaurant is "make your own stir fry," all you can eat for 15,000 tugriks, and if you get your ingredients right it can be really really good.  Unfortunately, this restaurant is an American chain from the South, which legitimized its name by opening a restaurant in downtown UB, so its not real Mongolian food by any means.  But its some of the best tasting food I have had here.

The following night I went to Ikh Mongol, a restaurant off of Seoul Street next to the circus.  There I met a few Canadian travelers, a guy from Montana studying goats for National Geographic, some American banjo player who is living in UB so she could learn to play the morin khuur, a traditional Mongolian bowed string instrument...she also brought her Mongolian friend with her.  I also met a young Mongolian guy who recently graduated in economics and poli sci from Hunter College in New York City and his neighbor, a girl from Minneapolis who is a full bright scholar filming a music documentary for MTV.  So it was a motley crew and they were all at this restaurant to see Altan Urag, a Mongolian rock band that combines traditional Mongolian wind and string instruments with a rock and roll drum beat.  They were pretty impressive, especially the throat singing.  The video that I will link doesn't give them justice, but it will give you an idea of what the instruments are like.

Now to the food.  I got a pizza, which was pretty good.  But the chef at this restaurant is German, so their Weisswurst is supposedly the best on thing on the menu.  Next time I go, I will probably get that.

That's it for now...more to come later.

Korea

Incheon International Airport

I arrived in Korea at 4 o'clock in the morning with a thirteen hour lay over ahead of me.  There weren't many people around so I explored Incheon International Airport for a couple of hours with the girl that I happened to be sitting next to on the flight from JFK before she had to depart on a flight to China.  Incheon airport is the largest airport in South Korea and is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world.  From 2006 to 2011 it has been rated the best airport in the world by the Airports Council International.  It has a golf course, spa, private sleeping rooms, ice rink, casino, indoor gardens and a Museum of Korea Culture.

The Buddhist temple had 108 steps leading up to it
108 steps to contemplate impermanence and mortality

However, I didn't stay in the airport long, instead I went to the sight-seeing tour desk and signed up for a 10,000 won (10 dollar), three hour tour of Incheon, a nearby city.  The tour was very nice.  We visited a Buddhist Temple, the Korean War Memorial (for about 15 seconds) and we had lunch in a traditional Korean Market.  The Buddhist Temple was perched on a ridge overlooking Incheon's Old City.  It was very beautiful and very peaceful, I could have stayed there all day.  While going around Incheon in the tour bus, I noticed army personnel everywhere, some perched in machine gun nests along the roads in full camouflage, guns pointed and ready to fire.  Korea is one of the most militarized places on earth.  There has been a de facto war on the Korean peninsula between the communist north and the democratic south since 1950 when North Korea invaded the South Korea.  Combat operations stopped in 1953 with a cease fire agreement but incidents along the demilitarized zone occur almost daily, like the recent shelling of a South Korea's Yeonpyeong island, which was North Korea's most recent attempt to get international attention.  Before then the world hadn't really thought about North Korea since the box office success of Team America in 2004.

Korean War Memorial

After the Korea War, South Korea, one of the Asian Tigers, experienced a sustained economic boom, in part thanks to economic aid from the United States.  The country is now one of the world's largest and most advanced economies, with successful global companies like Samsung, Hyundai and LG and an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion dollars.  The South Koreans refer to their economic success as the Miracle on the Han River.  Their miracle has been contrasted by the poor, stagnant and underdeveloped North Korean economy, which suffers from high poverty and starvation.  But now back to my tour...

Spicy Chicken

At the market I treated myself to some spicy chicken.  As the name implies it was spicy and delicious.  If only it were boneless it would have been a lot easier to eat.  After filling up on chicken I hopped back on the bus and hurried back to the airport for what I thought would be a 1 o'clock flight...  But when i got there I found out that my flight to Ulaanbaatar was delayed 17 hours.  I was immediately filled with joy, as this would allow me to spend more time in Korea.  It was also nice because Korean Air put me up in a nice hotel (Hyatt Regency) with free meals.  I went to my hotel, checked in, showered and went straight to the concierge desk.  The man there suggested that I take a bus to Seoul and visit Gyeongbokgung Palace.  Gyeongbokgung is a royal palace located in northern Seoul.  It was first constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867 and it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. The name of the palace, Gyeongbokgung, translates in English as "Palace of Shining Happiness."  

Gyeongbokgung Palace

The bus ride to Seoul from the airport hotel was over an hour and I slept the whole way.  Luckily I woke up right before my stop.  By the time I got to the palace it was just past 5 o'clock at night and the doors had just closed.  Dismayed, I sat outside the gates trying to snap some pictures.  That's when a friendly Korean woman in a traditional looking outfit spotted me from inside and walked over to me.  She noticed that I had arrived too late and couldn't enter the palace.  She called over a group of students and asked if I would do an interview with one of them.  I told the guy where I was from, what I was doing in Korea and how I had found out about the palace.  After the interview the woman brought me around the gate, spoke to security and got me into the palace for free! Wootga!  The students showed me around the palace for an hour.  I found out that they were all studying tourism at a near by University.  They shared with me their names, they told me about Korea and I told them about America.  They were all dudes between 22 and 25.  They told me that all Korean males are required to serve three years in the military before they turn thirty.  Most of them weren't happy about this, because it meant they would have to interrupt their University education or put off getting a job.  They were very friendly and also very adamant that before I leave Korea I try soju, a Korean liquor made from rice.  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to have it, but I exchanged email addresses with my new friends and they offered to show me around the next time I come to Seoul in January. After leaving the palace and walking a bit through Seoul, I said goodbye to the students and took the bus back to my hotel.  There, I ate my free dinner and went to bed.  The next morning I hopped on a plane to Ulaanbaatar and said goodbye to the clean, organized, and modern city of Seoul.

My new Korean friends