my thoughts. my adventures. my life.

April Fools!

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:31:55 -0400

If you followed this link from my facebook status, APRIL FOOLS!

Now, I know you’re curious about my restroom business, so I made this special blog for those of you have asked me how it all works…warning* these pictures may be disturbing and I suggest you not read on if you’re going to complain or judge me!

These are the different restroom options that I’ve experienced…first, INDOOR PLUMBING: arguable the worst and best. The best if there’s a toilet seat and the worst if there isn’t. I prefer outhouse over a non-seated toilet. All apartments have toilets, while homes may or may not. My yard family’s home has running water, but not a toilet or tub.

Second, THE OUTHOUSE:

You should make sure to bring enough toilet paper with you, but don’t bring the whole roll or there’s a chance you may drop it all down the hole!

Position #1: Tip Toe Lean. The newbie leans forward and squats on their tip toes, causing extreme tiredness on the thighs. Maybe I’m just not flexible enough to comfortably have my whole sole touch the ground :

Position #2: Uncontrollable pee. The newbie that only goes when they REALLY need to go will moves side to side, making sure their pee aims into the hole:

Position #3: Hold on to your dear life. The newbie going #2 will find something to help them not fall through the whole by either latching your fingers to the front of the outhouse (with the door closed of course) or…

Position #4: I need support. holding yourself up by putting your arm back against the wall:

Position #5: The skillful squatter. The skilled squatter will practice squatting throughout the day

and will be able to squat back (heels down), relax, and even smoke a cigarette if they desire. (I think this is what my yard dad does…since there’s all these butts down and around the outhouse). I don’t recommend texting in the outhouse like you do on your toilet seats because…well, you might not see it anymore.

Other positions I’ve heard from talking to other volunteers (yes, we talk about our restroom business as if it’s normal) include: straight up sitting down on the planks or kneeling on the planks…ya’ll can use your imagination for those ones :)

Position #6: The friendly position. Sharing an outhouse with someone can really show how close you are with them.

During the winter, we all have different techniques as it’s cold as heck to stay in your outhouse for a long time. Most ger dwellers use their dry sink bucket, which must be emptied every day or else the liquid will freeze and possibly crack your bucket:

Others that are braver will do a little warm up exercise, run out and go as fast as they can!

I like to have good timing and wait until I get to an indoor toilet to go #2.
Some friends and family members were curious about the winter upside-down poopscicle…so I’ll courageously add a picture at the end of this blog.

Position #7: The one where you can see the whole world:

and finally, Position #8: The one where the whole world can see you:

Thanks Devon for taking a picture of me while i do my business. lol

and now for the poopsicle….

okay, I’m not brave enough. you can message me if you really want to see it!

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!

Tsagaan Sar - Mongolia's Lunar New Year Celebration

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:25:01 -0500

Tsagaan Sar, literally translated to “White Moon/Month” is Mongolia’s lunar new year celebration. Before I get into talking about this amazing holiday, I want to talk about the weather, now that it’s starting to warm up.

First, I want to say that I need to be more careful for what I wish for.

January was the coldest I’ve felt in my life! On my facebook status, I jokingly wished Santa for a truckload of coal…and guess what I got:

Before January, I had chopped coal and chopped wood delivered into my little patio, so all I had to do was drag those right in whenever I ran out. Here’s an excerpt from one of my journal entries:

“I’m so exhausted. This whole week has been so exhausting. I’ve come home every night to a freezing ger and I’m having trouble starting my fire on the first try. Why was November and December so easy for my fire to start? Sometimes,after the 5th or 7th match doesn’t do its job, I just want to give up and cry…but I can’t… I’ll just freeze to death. Why did Peace Corps send me to the coldest serving country when my only reservation on my application was that ‘I get cold very easily’? I guess Peace Corps just wanted to do what it does best…challenge us. Coming home after being at work for 8+ hours to drag my coal in from negative degrees and chop my wood and coal has taken a toll on me. I’ve felt so tired at school, sometimes too exhausted to even say ‘Hi’ to people. I want this winter to be over already!”

For English club, I assigned my 10th and 11th grade students to write me a letter about anything that was on their mind, so I did the same. I expressed my tiredness and the hardships of living in a ger on my own—dreading the fact that I had to go home every night to chop wood and coal was always on my mind. When they read this part of my letter, they excitedly volunteered to come over the following weekend to help me chop and bag my fuel! It lasted me about a month, which meant I had way more energy to push through this freezing weather. Overall, I am thankful for my fuel (and my students of course!) for keeping me warm <3

So here’s a little history about Tsagaan Sar (White Moon/Month):

The origins of this name isn’t clear, but some Mongolians believe white symbolizes happiness, purity, and abundance of milk products. Those who celebrate the Lunar New Year like to greet the New Year making everything new so they deep clean their homes and sew new deels (pronounced dells), the Mongolian traditional outfits for the whole family. This year, my counterpart’s mom gifted me with a deel. If you buy the material and get someone to sew it for you, it can cost 60,000 to 200,000 Tugriks, depending on the size and material. Some people don’t wear deels for various reasons, especially the younger generation. Some excuses I’ve heard include being “too fat,” “too short,” or just overall not looking good in one. In bigger cities/towns, most people don’t wear deels because of modernization. I was excited to walk around my town to see all the people in their colorful deels.

The holiday is celebrated for 3 days, sometimes for the whole week or even until the end of the month. A few weeks before the first day of Tsagaan Sar, each family makes about 1,000 dumplings. A week before Tsagaan Sar, all the markets in my town ran out of flour! Good thing we got a shipment before the actual celebration for those procrastinators.

In preparation for T. Sar, I helped a total of 4 families and pinched about 1,300 buuz (the dumplings)!

Buuz making starts in the evening because most families don’t have freezers big enough to freeze the dumplings. The later it is, the colder and faster the buuz will freeze in order to reuse the board we lay them on. One family I helped finished at 4am!

Tsagaan Sar Eve is called “Full Day”. On this day, you must feel full all day to represent a full and prosperous coming year. Families have a feast, eating the food they have prepared for T. Sar.

During T. Sar, guests may come and go at any time of the day. The first day is reserved for family members, visiting the eldest first.

Here’s a general display of how each house has their table prepared. There’s a sheep’s body, an ‘edee’ (?) (the stack of brick biscuits filled with milk products, candy, and sugar cubes), alcohol, mare’s milk, fruit, dried fruit, and candy:

Here’s a close-up of the top of an edee:

So here’s the process:

1st: When you enter someone’s home, you greet the eldest person in the room first by doing a ritual named “zolgokh”. The younger person puts their arm under the elder person (like grabbing the older person’s elbow) and greet them with a question: “How is your rest?” or “Are you having a good New Year?” as they sniff you on both cheeks. Some people kiss the cheeks, but most older people sniff. People hold out a blue cloth to symbolize respect:

2nd: Older men carry around a snuff bottle, so they pass that to each person. When passing, you offer it with your right hand, with your left hand under your right elbow. When you accept, your sleeves need to be rolled down if they are rolled up, left hand under right elbow, and you just take a wiff of it. (This is how you generally pass and receive things in Mongolia)

3rd: You are offered milk tea (not like the sweet, yummy kind from Tapioca Express or Half and Half), fermented mare’s milk, and either wine or vodka, or both. Other drink options include camel’s milk, homemade sea-buckthorn juice, or homemade vodka. Here’s an image of Soyloo, my hashaa sister, holding 3 different drinks.

I thought this was ridiculous, until I got offered 6 at one house!

If you know me well, you know that I don’t drink much liquids throughout my day….T. Sar was so hard for me, I’ve never drank so much liquids in my life! You don’t have to drink them all, but you have to at least sip them.

*While you are drinking your liquids and eating different types of salads (potato salad, fruit salad- whatever the salad , it’s always mixed with mayonnaise), someone steams the buuz, which takes about 10-15 minutes minutes to cook.

4th: You flip your deel so that you don’t get the outer-side dirty (somehow, I still managed to drop food all over the outer deel) and at least finish the milk tea so that you can use the bowl to eat the buuz, which is usually served with different types of salad.

5th: After vodka is offered several times, children are offered gifts by the host before leaving. Some families give it to adults as well. Some families offered it to me just because I am a foreigner. Usually you don’t carry around a purse, so you stuff it into your deel.

then hope that your belt is tight enough…or else…

6th: Finally, you walk clockwise around the ‘edee’ on your way out and tap the side before eating a goody from it.

On the 2nd day, I went to the country side with my counterpart, where her parents and younger brother lives. During a restroom break (good think a deel is like a dress, easy to hide my goodies!), I took this picture on the side of the road

Their place was out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t another ger in site for miles.

Dulmaa’s nephew and their livestock:

A kid holding a kid! I just learned that a baby goat is called a kid! It was so cute watching him catch this baby goat:

The boys helped to herd the animals:

Look! Twins!

Total # sleeping in one ger: 14!

Some fun countryside photo shots:

I didn’t get to ride a horse as promised because they only had racehorses. When I saw one of Dulmaa’s younger brothers (not the trainer) fall off the horse after it randomly started speeding, I said “forget about it!” On the way home, we saw some wild camels…I’ll ride one one day!

On the first day, before we started visiting families, my Mongolian family and I went to the top of the hill to walk around the oovoo 3 times for luck:

Then, with another family, we went to the only other unique thing about my town, which is this horse statue:

Stephanie and Anh hosted a mini T. Sar and had us over. We took a “jenkin” (original) Mongolian photo:

Mongolians generally don’t smile in their pictures!

In January, our school teachers put on a concert for our whole province’s teachers for Teacher’s Day, here are a couple photos from that:

It reminded me of my college Vietnamese Culture Nights…good times :)

Notice that I’m the only one smiling…oh Mongolians :P

This past Friday was wear your deel to school day, so I want to share some photos from it:

Some students didn’t wear deels. Boys’ uniform is a suit, while girls are these maid-like outfits (center row, left seat):

This is my friend, Dashaa and her 4th grade class:

The elementary school boys wear blue suits, while secondary school students wear black suits:

Look at these 1st grade cuties:

Preparing for their picture, this first grader helps his friend button up his deel:

I thought this was really cute, so I’m going to end it with this picture :)

Happy Year of the Snake!!

My Ger Life

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 04:52:00 -0500

Before winter hit, I got to take this beautiful picture of my ger :) I love the fact that I can see the twinkling stars every night.

This is the inside of my ger, I think i’ve showed this picture before.

Sometimes I get random visitors :)

Other times, I invite my English Club students to enjoy a projected movie in my ger, courtesy of the school (courtesy of World Vision who donated it to my school):

And when they come over…they eat all my candy, but 2 :P

This little friend is a solar bobby head…

Unfortunately, the sun only gets as close as the bottom of my dresser :(

I teach environmental art to some students and I’ve decorated my place with some of the flowers we made. Hopefully it inspires people who visit my ger! Our town doesn’t have a recycling program, so I gotta be creative with the bottles I use:

This is Anh’s ger getting winterized. They added another layer of felt to keep the heat in:

Added the ping (a patio?) to store the fuel:

added glass to the top so that sunlight can still get in without the chilly air

Back to the inside of my ger, here’s my dry sink and bucket:

This is how the water works:

I have an electric stove, but when the electricity goes out or when I feel like my fire is hot enough to make my food…

…I cook on the stove instead! (Notice my self-made heating wall. I went around my community looking for cement bricks before it began to get too cold to wander around)

Inside of my ping, I have wood and coal as fuel. My fuel is provided by my school and my school’s driver chops my wood for me :)

Inside my ger, I always have 1 bag of wood and 1 bag of coal ready to make my fires!

Before I start making my fire, I have to empty out the tray. (this is also a morning routine)

I dump it in a trashcan next to my outhouse:

Then I am ready to start my fire! (i also put some brings in the inside to hold the heat)

Everyone makes fires differently. Some volunteers only have wood, some only have coal, some don’t have any at all becaues they live in apartments or houses. I’m thankful to be living in a ger because I can at least control the temperature. Sometimes in an apartment, the heater won’t work, other times, the running water is too hot to even take a shower! Here are the steps I take to start the most effective fire, with the resources I have:

First, I lay down a sheet of newspaper:

Then I wrap small wood chips in paper that I can’t reuse anymore (2-3 sheets is sufficient):

Then I lay that down on top of the newspaper: (living her has made me a hoarder of paper. I just came back from a Peace Corps training in the city, and wished I was home so that I could save ALLLL that paper and poster paper used for my fires)

Then I lay thinner wood pieces over the paper (wood helps to catch the coal and gets the place warmer faster):

Then dump the coal on top of that! (coal keeps the ger warmer longer):

Then I light the match….

And voala!!

I’m happy to say that my fires can last up to 6 hours now! Before maybe a month ago, I was waking up every 3 hours to add coal or sometimes restart my fire, if it completely went out. Now, it’s not so miserable waking up in the morning!

My school gave me old desks and chairs for my wood…so I had a lot of metal pieces that wouldn’t fall to the bottom. I don’t know what’s worst…the fumes from the coal or the fumes from the paint of the furniture burning.

Winter is finally here…

This is what happens to my water when I don’t come home during the day to sustain my fire: :(

My surprise Christmas gift! Seriously the best gift ever. It’s an advent calendar of my friends and family with a message from each person. I didn’t want to open them because it’s just so cute! but once I started, I couldn’t help but open more than 1 a day :P It’s okay though because it took a long time for it to arrive, so I technically wasn’t cheating, just catching up! Thanks Nina and Jennifer for spending countless hours on this very merry Christmas gift :D

I love, love, love it! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

With all the traveling and moving and adventures, where was your favorite place, so far? :)

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 03:03:19 -0500

hmmm, in terms of living, I’d have to say Mongolia. I enjoy the simple life. Living in a one room house is convenient and not having to get into a car to go to the market is also great. In terms of scenery, I enjoyed Barcelona and all its art. Gaudi is pretty awesome!

My New Community

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 04:03:00 -0500

My town is known for the biggest horse-fiddle in the world (probably the only…):

It’s located on the Xar Uul “Black Mountain,” which is really a brown hill.

This is the view from up there:

My town has 12,000 people, not too big and not too small :)

There’s not as much sand as I originally thought, but it’s pretty ridiculous that there are workers that sweep the streets everyday…it’s the gobi!! The dirt/sand will never go away!! They even work when it’s in the negatives! This is almost as ridiculous as how everyone wipes down their shoes every time they go indoors, or how they wash their cars when a dust storm can hit anytime.

This is the inside of my ger (pronounced like gear).

Here’s my dry sink:

My fridge!! (although, a fridge isn’t necessary in the winter, because everything in your house freezes anyway) and central heating system.

The start of winterization: getting glass windows so the cold air doesn’t get in:

My huge place. I have 5 walls, which means it takes longer to warm up in the winter…but great for having a lot of guests!

I live in the yard of the Training Manager of my school. Her husband comes in to check in on me sometimes to make sure I made my fire warm enough. There house has running water, so I just have to go next door to get my water! (I’m so happy about this cause the well is pretty darn far!)

In there house, they have this frame (my cousins have it too, so I thought of them when I saw it)

This is my haasha mom (yard mom) getting injected..yup, the liquid is up close to the ceiling. At least she didn’t use perfume as alcohol like my host mom from training did!

My cool Mongolian key and lock:

I feel like a handywomen living in a ger. I made a bug barrier out of the mosquito net Peace Corps gave us. Since the Gobi doesn’t have mosquitoes (thanks gooooodness!!), I cut it up to shield from the many bugs we do have.

And the rest of it, has become my pillow.

I made noodles!

First dinner in a ger. made a little too much just for myself. I’m bad at making portions…thank goodness for the fridge :) Although, Mongolians think having leftovers get you sick. One of my counterparts visited me and threw out my leftovers! :(

I went to the countryside (just a 15 minute drive). The lady was making Mongolian dairy products:

I got to milk goats!!

This is how they gather the goats…there’s a special way of tying them together, so that it’s easier/faster to get through all of them!

This one farted on me :(

Will and I were greeted with an outdoor concert!!

Just kidding, we’re not that special. The government put it on for the end of the summer. I was so happy though, to know that outdoor concerts exists in my town!

The M22s (Corey, Stephanie, and Anh) threw Will and I a welcoming party and me a late birthday party. We have weekly collaboration meetings and weekly mandatory bonding nights. However, they haven’t been very successful because one of the M22s are always out of town. Will and I are on lock down for 3 months and can’t leave until Thanksgiving-ish.

Here are some images of putting up a ger:

Yup, when it’s a windy day, it can get dangerous. I thought my place was going to get blown over the other day! The results: only a broken glass (from the top) and a lot of sand/dust that got in.

First day of school, they have a huge celebration with speakers, singers, and dancers.

Out of the 7 new staff members they received this year, I got to make a speech!

The audience had lost attention after the first 10 minutes and I didn’t go on until 30 minutes into the ceremony. When I went up, everyone immediately stopped talking when I spoke English. Then in Mongolian, I asked them how my English was :P Then everyone started whispering and wondering if I was Mongolian or not! As nervous as I was, I think my speech was successful :)

The president gives a speech on this first day, so we had the whole school watching his speech on this tv:

Then all staff members go crazy. Usually they leave to the countryside (which i hear is REALLY crazy), but it was so windy, that we celebrated in the cafeteria. There’s “horak” the dish with the stones that I ate when I went to the countryside for the first time, candy, bread, mere’s milk, and a lot of alcohol!

Then they play this finger game (kind of like rock, paper, scissors), where the pointer beats the thumb, middle finger beats the pointer, and so on…so at one point, I got to flip off my director! :O

Then the losing team has to drink mere’s milk and sing.

My town had a little animal fair:

and I saw my first camels up close and personal!!!

The nose is superrrr soft. I couldn’t ride it :(

See anything strange about this next picture?

I went potato picking out in the middle of nowhere. We walked for about an hour to get there.

Just a month into my new place, already got 2 accidents:

I slipped on a tiny hill, more like a bump, and banged my knee against the dirt floor…

and I had my first ger fire!! I forgot the box of match on the stove after starting my fire :/ thank goodness it wasn’t anything bigger…or else my fire alarm would have went off and thattt could have been embarrassing.

Dundgobi’s first snowfall of the season:

Last Days of Training

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:39:00 -0400

During the last week of training, I psyched myself out about living on my own. What kept me from keeping my head down were the emails and comments people left me, encouraging me to look at everything as a positive learning experience. I tried to stay away from downtime, so I:

Hung out with the boys:

Watched the puppies grow up:

Watched my haasha mom chase the cows out of our yard:

Went to the Russian/Mongolian boarder (sometimes, foreigners aren’t allowed and if you look European, they’ll think you’re a Russian spy, so they won’t let you go forward; all Kitaho and I had to do was not open our mouths, we passed as Mongolians and had no trouble at all!):

Had a nice picnic:

Had a nice bath:

andd of course, I can’t forget the Jack pose (my cousin):

Then, I got invited for a last meal with Tuul’s family:

Wrestled Onboldt:

And got defeated:

Then we left our training sites and all (68) of us convened in Darkhan, where we found out about our site placements and had our swearing in ceremony:

The M22s (22nd group of volunteers to be in Mongolia) told us (M23s) that for site placement, we would be standing on a huge map…and if we can’t reach each other, then most likely it’ll be really hard to see each other at all throughout our service. When I saw this map, I was happy because it seemed like I’d be able to reach many people, especially trying to fit 68 people on this map…however, this was just a visual for us…and the real map was the whole field behind the people in the photo.

Unless you’re on a train line, to get from province to province, you have to travel from your site, to Ulaanbaatar (UB, the capital), to your destination. After we got our placements, I was too sad to take any more pictures. The 10 of us were spread out throughout the map, except 6 had a partner in the same province. Although I didn’t get another CYD (Community Youth Developer), I ended up with 4 other site mates, 3 M22s and 1 M23 who I got to travel to our new town with.

At the end of the week, after more training, we had our swearing in ceremony. All of our host families were invited. Devon’s host mom and younger sister came to support the both of us. They even gave me a pair of Mongolian house slippers as a gift!

This is our Peace Corps Country Director, Darlene:

Then we performed our dance we’ve been practicing for for weeks:

Here’s a clip of our dance…my camera’s battery ran out :(

We spent a few days in UlaanBaatar, where we all stayed a dorm and send people off hour by hour, day by day. Will and I were one of the last to leave, so we watched the dorm rooms slowly become empty. People who weren’t at fly-sites got to buy household goods. Along with my 2 luggage (one summer bag and one winter bag), my hiking back pack, and the household goods I bought (rice cooker, water boiler, cooking pan, and some utensils)…Peace Corps gave us all this to take with us as well:

fat stack of manuals and resources (good for kindle this winter, since it’s all on the flashdrives they provided us)

A nice water filter:

A med kit:

our tumpin (tub/bucket), mosquito net, fire alarm, fire extinguisher, and surge protector. Those living in apartments also receive an electrical, portable heater. I’m not sure how the volunteers who have fly-sites traveled with all this. Thank goodness my school director got a Russian meeker (van-like vehicle) for Will, his director, my director, and I.

Things I found interesting (that I didn’t blog about yet) during my first few months in Mongolia:

Almost all Mongolians worship Chingis Khan (Genghis Khan):

We ordered something to-go and we got the full plate (I think my family returned the plate later)

This home-made ladder:

“baas” means poop: We got a Choco Pie box with a ziploc of poop and a note that said, “Dear CYD, Enjoy your baas of chocolate. Love, Shaamar” (we were so excited to get some choco pie…darn them English Teachers in Shaamar!)

This “bathing suit” my host mom gave me (and a bottle of wine!) for summer camp…I wonder what kind of camp she thought I was going to…

This is how I washed my dishes in my host family’s home:

Some families use soap, others simply use hot water. I didn’t find it too unusual since my grandpa use to wash the dishes with just hot water.

My mom uses a cookie tin for her sewing materials too!

The emptiness and sadness of a hospital room. Tuul had constant headaches and she had to stay in the hospital for 10 days. For some odd reason, 10 days is the amount of days you stay in there for most things (pregnancy, cancer, headaches, backaches—the ones I’ve heard of)

There are stray dogs everywhere. There is never silence at night (especially living in a ger), since dogs are constantly barking.

Devon’s host dad hopped on my horse with me to herd some cattle (kind of awkward…but awesome that I got to herd cattle on a horse!):

These printers getting their ink through IVs at a photo center

After chopping up a log,

they stack it to dry it out:

There are graffiti and Lakers/Celtics fans:

Mops are simply rags being pushed by a stick:

Mongolian fruits are imported mostly from China or Russia. Mongolians believe the ones from China are bad and full of chemicals (which they are inorganic):
I was so happy to have found this market!! I won’t be seeing these this winter…

Wrestlers wear these because back then, a woman tried to compete (may be a myth, but this is what I’ve heard):

Mongolia has pigeons too! (For some reason, I didn’t think Mongolia would)

Mongolians are prideful. Most cars have a Mongolian flag on its window somwhere.

It’s normal to see a Mongolian men walk around in public with their shirt half way up:

It’s normal for Mongolian women to breastfeed in public:

Mongolians have crazy lives too (notice the 3 dots on his face):

Here’s a clip of Namuuna trying to teach me how to say “family” the day of my arrival…I swear I was pronouncing it right and she’s just punking me…click here.

Hair-cutting ceremony and Hudoo Time (Countryside)

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 09:54:12 -0400

I’ve finally settled into my new place that I’ll call home for the next 2 years. Here’s a picture of the inside of my ger:

But before I go on about my new community, I’ll update about the rest of my summer! First, the hair-cutting ceremony. In Mongolia, children don’t get their hair cut until they are 3 years old. The day the parents choose to have the ceremony is a special day. All family and close friends come to wish the little boy/girl good health and fortune for the rest of their lives.

Tuul invited me to her nephew’s hair cutting ceremony :)

Here’s a picture of a monk who came to bless Onboldt:

Here’s a picture of Onboldt, his parents, and the feast!

But that’s not all, we prepared huge pots of food.

Tuul and I washed dishes all day, since so many guests kept appearing and we didn’t have enough bowls and utensils.

This is Tuul carrying Onboldt’s younger sister. She’s only a month old and it is a tradition to keep everything of the babies for that month. So they collected dirty pampers for a whole month!

This is Tuul taking a sip of Arik (fermented horse’s milk that’s super sour and that can get you drunk!)

Here’s the process:

1st, you take a sip of the Arik out of the copper bowl (special bowl)…I’m pretending like I enjoy it here:

2nd, you get the scissors and cut a piece of his hair.

After, you place the hair in the blue scarf.
3rd, you hand the child some money (symbolism of good fortune)

Finally, you tell him a good wish..in my case, I said “good boy” to him, because he knew what that meant and it’s the only English words he knew :P

He was a really good boy throughout the long process. So many people came to cut a piece of his hair. This is him on break:

Later that night, they busted out the Vodka:

Tuul’s family is so nice. Her parents always invited me over and her and her mom always taught me new things. Here we are in a car, driving to visit a relative:

It’s common to fit 7-10 people in a 5-seat car. Here, we have 4 people in the back, and 4 people in the front. The one-month-old is on Tuya’s (Tuul’s sister) lap. It’s also common to have babies driving the car too! :P

At first, this is how Onboldt felt about me:

Then he finally softened up:

Then he sat next to me and copied me! (good sign that he likes me!)

Then I went to the HUDOO (countryside) with Devon and my adopted host family! This is our drive:

This is the 3rd time our car broke down, 3 hours into our drive..and it wouldn’t start again…somehow, out of nowhere, his buddies showed up to help fix the car. My handy dandy multiple-tool knife (like a swiss army knife) came in handy!

Solonga decided to make use of her time and went out to pick flowers:

Devon and I at an Ovoo. We stopped by every ovoo we saw on the way and walked around it 3 times, dropping a piece of stone/rock at the pile. This is meant to give us a “good and safe drive”…which didn’t happen. lol But at least we got there alive! This is us after a nice nap (of course I didn’t fail to fall asleep through the bumpy ride -_-)

Since our car couldn’t make it up that hill, dad made us get out, run up and didn’t wait for us, so we had to run down too…

We finally made it! Except, their ger is that white speck on the other side of the river!!

Home sweet home, for the next 2 nights:

They have a solar panel!!!

The inside of their ger. They have a rifle for hunting!

Here’s dad posing with the rifle:

When we thought we were dry and warm from the rain, dad decided to pitch a tent for the kids while it was pouring rain! The countryside kids helped.

Before going to bed in our tent, we made dinner and herded the animals back. I got to make the fire! (I’ll be doing this a lot for the next two years)

Here’s Dad’s friend’s son modeling with his animals:

The herd they have to gather back into the pin every night:

Then we woke up at the crack of dawn (6am!) to milk cows, best time, I guess:

Apparently, I was a natural at it! :P

The herd grazed towards the river

After Devon and the boy herded them back towards the house and into their pin, there was a chosen one…dun…dun…dun.

Then the boy decided to pose with this one too!!

But the goat tried to escape!! and dragged the boy!! HAHAHA

After he was able to get himself back up, he taught the goat a lesson. I’ll post pictures of the sad, but ritualized, death of the goat at the end of this post.

This boy is 15 years old! The first thought…maybe malnourished? But then again, his mom is pretty petite.

…Then we picked wild strawberries!

This is what it looks like when it gets to the streets: ….all of this must have taken hours or just a lot of people-power!

our ger from afar! (the goat is cooking)

No access to a market for hours, but at least they have access to…strawberries?

Then when we think the trip is over, we run into friends 1/4 of the way home! (They live in the countryside area of where we were)…so they stopped, greeted each other with Mongolian Vodka and the strawberries that we picked:

When we saw our parents pack the alcohol…we thought, boy will it be crazy in the hudoo…but little did we know, it was for the people we run into along the way! We gave some to the friends that saved us on the way there…and they pulled it out again when they ran into their old school friends.

After they decided to head back to the hudoo, we stopped along the way to have a picnic:

Stopped at a ger for something, saw a basketball hoop, saw some kids, witnessed a hair-cutting ceremony for a sheep (not really a ceremony…andddd don’t worry, it’s still alive!), and drank tea, which is traditional when you go in someone’s house.

Look how cute this little booger is!!

We finally arrived to the ger…2 or 3 hours later…

Gers without solar panels or an electricity line use car batteries… :/

they have satellite!!

Then while the adults hung out in the ger and got drunk, the kids pitched up the tent and tried not to get blown over by the heavy wind and rain!

Then at 11pm, we finally head home…but instead of reaching home, we arrive at the nearest town at 2am and slept until morning, which means Devon and I will miss language class. Finally at 12pm on Monday, we start heading out…as we drive for 5 minutes, we stopped and the 3 of us were thrown into meeker (van-like vehicle) and find out the parents are staying behind because there was no gas in the car and the whole town didn’t have electricity, so getting gas was impossible at the time. So we ride for 3 hours with random people and stop along the way because the meeker driver decides that he’s low on water…

So he stops by the nearest puddle and starts to fill a bottle up!

He saw me taking pictures and said: “it’s okay, sometimes I drink this water too!” (or at least that’s what i think he said after everyone in the car laughed).

Yup, just a bad luck weekend with transportation (which is common in Mongolia, but we made it out alive :)

We finally get back to our hometown and Solonga opens the market, while Devon and I make it right in time for afternoon Social Work Training.

Alright, this blog is long enough, can’t finish blogging about the rest of summer in this one.

Hey mom, look! I’m a hairdresser too! :P

Continue reading if you want to see the process of having goat for lunch…you won’t like this if you love animals.

They sacrificed a whole goat for us…we must be special :)

1st. Hold the goat down and close it’s mouth so that you won’t hear it yelp :/

2nd. After you cut a slit, you reach in and pull out the heart

3rd. You skin the goat, working around the legs, then neck. (This is the boy’s mom btw- petite, you see?)

At this time, the head is decapitated…

4th. Cut the skin that holds the guts together

5th. Let it spill

6th. Empty all the guts (getis) into a bowl and clean it all—even the pipe with all the poop in it because EVERYTHING, but the poop and skin, gets eaten…

7th. You scoop out the blood—Mongolians are very skilled at not letting a drip of blood slip, but some went overboard on this one.

7th. You hang some parts of the meat and the skin to dry

8th. You can pose with it when you’re all done:

Solonga went to the river to pick some stones while Devon and I were recording the death of the goat…A popular way to cook the meat is to put hot stones on it! When the food is cooked, you have to hold the greasy and hot stone in your hands before eating (not really sure why, couldn’t understand the explanation haha Sometimes I wonder why I should bother asking “yaagad-why” when I don’t know the language enough to understand the explanation.) One day, when my Mongolian gets better, I’ll be able to understand and have an update about the tradition.

And all the guts:

Bon Apetit. (This isn’t cooked yet, but the carrots and potatoes look tasty!) :P

I hope ya’ll didn’t get sick from seeing this! Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!

Disclaimer: 1 animal was harmed in the making of this feast.

Summer Camp and Naadam

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:58:46 -0400

Namuuna is back!! This is her sitting on my legs laughing after she tried bending my hands backwards. She was home the night I blogged about missing her! She went to China to go to a hospital to check out this wart-like pain on her thigh. I’m so happy that she’s back. I’ve definitely noticed a change in my attitude with her now. I’m much more patient and I don’t worry about little things anymore. Some trainees and I work out on a daily basis. Our workouts consist of Insanity, Jillian Michaels, Yoga, and running around town. Namuuna likes to come with me (I don’t have a choice really..she just follows) and I used to get so mad when she would cling to my legs/arms, touch my butt, touch and laugh at all of our sweat, and run around touching us while yoga-ing and namastay-ing it up; now that I am more patient and I know more Mongolian, I find that my heart rate doesn’t increase from annoyance. I’m glad I got a second chance.

I want to start my picture portion of the blog with this one:

I thought it was cool to see an older man with the traditional deel on, walking with a modern-day soldier.

This one is crazy…this electrician climbed up the pole with these shoes that dig into the pole…he reminded me of Tomy, my brother the electric engineer :P

One of the things I’ll be remembered for during training is eating SAMARS (nuts) during class…all the time. Mongolians eat this everywhere and throw them on the ground…so it’s common to see SAMARS shells in crowded places. There’s a technique to opening these. If you bite to hard, you will bite through the actual nut and it’ll be much more complicated to remove.

Here’s a picture of the Classical Mongolian script (below) vs Cyrillic alphabet (above). Supposedly, it’s a new law that every Mongolian should know how to write in the Mongolian script…thank goodness Peace Corps didn’t have to teach us that…I already have a hard time reading Cyrillic alphabet -__-

There is strong presence of Russian words in the Mongolian language and the number of English words is constantly rising, especially when it comes to technology. I met some guys that were really silly and didn’t know a lot of English who said, “Hi, my nem is iPod” :P

This is us celebrating Devon’s birthday. We had to use what we had…Peace Corps is all about being resourceful!

Devon has been so kind to share her family with me. Her host family has pretty much adopted me into theirs. She lives the closest to me, so I hang out with her and her family more than any other volunteers and their families.

Our CYD group with our Language and Culture Trainers:

This is our class (the slow class). We’re separated into a fast and slow class for language.

The 10 of us went to the Mother Tree (EEJ MOD), which is a religious symbol where Mongolians go to worship the spirit of the tree. Even though it caught on fire, Mongolians still come with milk, candy, vodka, rice, and money as offerings. The blue scarves, HADAG, signify a respectful offering. We each got one on our first day of official training.

This is the entrance to the tree…when you exit, you must face your butt out, walking backwards.

The table was full of people’s offerings:

The surrounding trees were drenched in vodka, milk, and everything else. We had to walk carefully through the maze:

Since the Mother Tree was burnt, they dubbed another tree near by the “Daughter Tree”

In Mongolia, there are spinning wheel barrels at temples and at religious shrines…Some homes and even cars have these solar-powered ones that spin when the light shines on it:

Introducing Solongo (means Rainbow in Mongolian)…Solongo (on the left) is Devon’s host sister. This 12 years old watches over the store when her mom is busy/not home. Solongo invites me to sleep over sometimes and when I hang out at the store, people think that we’re sisters. Solongo and Tsitseral (on the right) are best friends. One day, they were in Devon’s outhouse together, going #2… Some outhouses have 2 holes, which makes going to the restroom together possible. We all (Americans) joked about how going #2 with another Mongolian is how you know when you are integrated into your community. One day, as I was going #2 in Devon’s outhouse, Solongo walked in on me and quickly shut the door after she saw my shocked face…but then decided 2 seconds later that she was going to go ahead and join me…so we pooped elbow to elbow LOL of course I rushed myself out of there. I’m not quite integrated…yet.

Camp time!

On our way to camp, the road was crazy! Sometimes, we were on straight grass…I have no idea how the driver knew how to get there. There are no signs to tell you which direction to go to, so what was suppose to be a 5 hour drive, took a lot longer than that. We stopped by people’s gers on the way to ask for directions. The driver also knew someone from each town we drove through…it’s such a small country, it’s common to know people from the other side of the country!

This is the inside of a ger:

This is the road:

This is Alysse (picture above), our Community Youth Development Trainer. She’s been in Mongolia for a year now and I hope that my Mongolian will be as great as hers by next year! One day at camp, while she was in mid story, I decided it was time that I touched the poof on her head…why? I have no idea…What was I thinking?! at least it gave everyone in the room a good laugh. By the way, I wasn’t the only one who was curious about the poof, thanks, Rene, for admitting that you were curious too!

This is my camp boyfriend, Munkchin. The first time I met him, I was chalking in the word “friendship” and he decided to come next to me to draw a heart with a “M + A” in the center of it.

This is the bouquet of flowers (weeds) that he picked out for me:

This is us playing Huuzur, a Mongolian popular card game during our free time:

Competition is HUGE in Mongolia. They have competitions for anything you can think of. They have Olympics for school subjects every year, which I’m excited to help with, since I’ll be working with a school social worker. Anyway, at camp, we were separated into 3 groups, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore (which they say Turtle because they can’t pronounce Theodore) and they competed in a talent show, fashion show, and English language competition. I thought it was interesting and sad how some people took the competitions so seriously. This girl cried because her team lost the talent show competition:

This is the whole camp

So English Teaching volunteers have to practice teach 4 times a week, which means they have a lot of lesson planning to do. We as CYD, got the opportunity to teach at camp for an hour and work with a Mongolian counterpart to teach a Life Skills lesson, which is what we’ll be working on a lot at site. Mongolia is the only country with a law to have a Social Worker for every 1,500 students. This summer, the 10 of us have been training to be counterparts to Social Workers. We’ll be working together to put on programs and practices that will encourage positive youth development.

This is Katie and I teaching a less on body parts, playing Simon Says:

One morning, I woke up before the rest of camp after having a nightmare and decided to take pictures of the beautiful scenery:

Then Rene woke up and we decided to go on a run to find the holy water spring:

The holy water area was marked off by the blue scarves:

Our trainer told us that taking a sip will bring you good luck…the water wasn’t flowing at all, so we decided it was a bad idea to try to drink still water. People left buckets for us to scoop the water.

One morning, when we woke up to do morning exercises, I thought the clouds opened up to the shape of a condensed form of Mongolia:

The fashion show. Categories include: cross-dressing, lady gaga, most creative and most fashionable.

Our favorite:

The Alvin group!

The last morning at camp, we got the opportunity to ride horses. On our way to the horses, we saw this little boy herding calves!

This guy took on 2 new horse-riders. I was trapped between them most of the time. Alyse fell off her horse because the saddle wasn’t tied on right! The horse bent down to eat, and she started to slip off. My legs were stuck between the two horses, but everyone was okay in the end :)

Since Alyse’s horse was always causing trouble with mine. He decided to release me and let me ride alone, since my horse was well trained. There were times it started going fast to catch up to another horse…it was super scary, but fun. Look how far behind I was!

What was suppose to be an hour horse ride turned into a 2 hour one, so we rushed back to pack, and rushed to the train station. Our bags couldn’t fit in our meeker, so we left without it, hoping they would catch up to us by the time we arrived at the train station. Our bags arrived 1 minute before the train arrived, so we had to rush and walk through mud and run to the train because it only stopped for 3 minutes! It had rained, so there was a flood/river in front of the train station entrance.

Rene got suck!

Us CYDs were lucky, after camp, our town celebrated NAADAM.

Naadam festival is celebrated throughout Mongolia, where they have competitions for the “Three Manly Sports,” horseback racing, archery, and wrestling. Young boys ride the race horses, men compete through 6 stages for wrestling, while women will participate in archery alongside men (youth also compete). Huushuur, fried meat turnovers, are popular and traditional to eat during the Naadam festival. It’s said that if you touch the sweat of the winning horse, it will bring you good luck. The use of child-jockeys is under scrutiny by the government and press because racers have suffered injuries and there were 17 deaths within a ten years. When a child falls of the horse, the horse continues to race, since they know the path. Many horses have also passed out from exhaustion. I heard 4 horses died during the race in Sukhbaatar.

Suhkbaatar just built this stadium last year, so people from smaller soums came out to watch the competitions and eat a lot of Huushuur.

The opening ceremony:

Archery:

Wrestling: They go through 6 to 8 stages…this is stage 1, where the professionals can go against army soldiers:

I didn’t see the horeracing, but here’s a picture of a horseracer:

It’s known that if you touch the sweat of a winning horse, it will bring you good luck…so when the winning horse came by, everyone rushed it and it got so scared :/

They had games to entertain all the people present:

A Huushuur stand:

My EEJ (Mongolian mom) gave me a del, so I wore it for Naadam! This is Tuul and I with my host brother’s friend, who is a wrestler:

The Mongol del is traditional clothing most commonly worn by herders and people living in small soums (villages). In larger soums and in UB, youth are found wearing it only on special occasions such as Tsagaan Sar (White Moon, celebrated during the same time of Chinese/Vietnamese New Years-based on the lunar calendar), Naadam, and graduation. Longer winter dels are insulated with wool.

Shagai (Anklebones) is the official 4^th sport of Naadam, although I didn’t see it at the stadium. Shagai involves flicking and/or rolling (like a dice) animal anklebones. There are many games you can play with the anklebones, including jacks! When playing the game where the sides have to match when you roll 4 bones, each side it lands on represents a camel, horse, goat, and sheep (4 of the 5 dominant animals that have helped to sustain Mongolia-the 5^th is cattle, including: cow, yak, and bulls)

My next blog: I got to stay in a ger for 4 nights and witness a 3-year old boy’s hair-cutting ceremony!

This past week has been rough because there’s only one week left before we find out about our placements…but I know the sun will shine through the gray clouds soon enough :)

Happy Birthday, Tomy!

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:41:08 -0400

Today is my brother, Tomy’s, 26^th birthday! Growing up, we had a love/hate relationship. I always annoyed him, so he would constantly beat me up physically and verbally. Sometimes, I felt that I really hated him because of this. However, without him, I really wouldn’t have had a father figure or anyone to look after me the way he did. He would pick me up from school in elementary school, he and Teddy would wait for me to catch the bus in middle school, and he showed me the ropes for high school. We used to attend this community center together, called the Alma Youth Center. He started working there since he was 14, somehow. He has always been a hard worker. He’s supported me throughout my life and I constantly feel guilty for having had the privilege to travel to so many places, but he hasn’t really done any traveling himself. He got hired by Southern California Edison for a full time position before I left, making it easier to let go the fact that I was going to leave our mom and not be able to support her financially. Every time I was in a predicament or needed advice, I went to him, even when I knew that he would yell at me. He always gives me the best advice. I have a lot to thank him for. Anyway, Tomy, thanks for helping to shape who I am and I wish you a happy birthday! I wished I was there to celebrate with you!

On another note, I’ve been working on a photo post for about 3 weeks now! I don’t get a lot of time for internet-time, so it’s hard to get a post out. I’ve done a lot, despite our daily schedule. This is what my schedule looks like Mon-Fri: 9-1 Language Class; 2:30-5:30 Community Youth Development Training (Social Work Training) and somehow, I can squeeze in English lessons for my neighbor, cooking with Tuul (my host brother’s girlfriend), and all the other fun stuff I’ve posted about.

We leave Suhkbaatar in just 1 week! This past week, I’ve been stressing out a little because we’ll have to leave our groups and the place we’ve called home for the past 2 months. I’ve made a great support group here, and now I have to leave it. However, a CYD volunteer is supposedly going to get a placement here, so I’ll have 1 out of 10 chances of getting this location! It’s been hard to wrap around the fact that I’ll be living on my own for the next 2 years! I’ve never had my own room for more than 3 months…why the heck did I volunteer myself to live on my own for 2 years?!? What was I thinking! I’m starting to understand now, when people told me, “you’re brave for doing this!” Now, I’m feeling not so brave. The only time I lived on my own was for a few weeks one summer at UCSB. That summer I went through a mini depression…I hope I don’t feel that way once I get to site. I got really sick last night…waking up in the middle of the night a few times to throw up. I think I’ve been thinking too much and psyching myself out. Sometimes I think about how lonely I’ll be this winter or how I may freeze in my sleep!…I hope that all the clothes I got as gifts will keep me warm enough to survive the winter!

The 10 of us are having a sleepover at Darren’s tonight. We’ve already planned to have a dinner together after we hear about our placement, so that we can debrief and maybe…probably…cry to each other. Anyway, I hope I can post before the end of next week, since I don’t know what my living situation is going to be like after that…internet or not…running water or not…electric stove or not…outhouse or not…someone in my neighborhood to speak English or not! I’ve been pretty good about learning the language though…I’ve gotten compliments for understanding a lot for just being here for only 2 months. :)

a post about Namuuna and Kiss Kiss

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:47:18 -0400

I said I’d start with a nice picture in my last post, so here’s the view from my balcony. The sunset is beautiful from up there. Down at the bottom is my outhouse.

Some trends in the children in Sukhbaatar, Selenge:

spoiled at a young age but also take on a lot of responsibilities starting at a young age
allowed to eat anything (pure sugar included)
not very shy and are very competent (able to order things at the market, ask for directions, etc)
I’ll go on in another post about Mongolian children and the hardships they face.

Here’s Namuuna getting directions from my EEJ (mom in Mongolian) to purchase some stuff from the market:

Here she is, at 5 years old, buying herself an ice cream after ordering what EEJ had told her to get.

Here’s Namuuna eating the strawberry creme spread right out of the jar for dinner:

Just a few weeks into living with Namuuna, I was starting to get annoyed by her because she went through my stuff without my permission, was very bossy, stubborn (I picked up her litter and she wouldn’t follow me home until I threw it back down on the floor!), and prevented me from enjoying time with my friends…and just as I was starting to appreciate her and see the good qualities in her (like being able to show her off with her ability to count to 10 in English to others, taking me to the market, showing me how to clean my floor, helping me wash my hair with her filthy hands :P ), she left back to her parents :( It’s so quiet in the house now and I’m really sad.

Before she left, her and EEJ brought home a little kitten, who EEJ calls “kiss kiss”

I like Kiss Kiss because he likes to cuddle :) Although it woke me up super early one morning, I thought it was cute that he came to small spoon my neck. hahah

Out of time! But here’s a picture to foreshadow my next post about my experience at summer camp!

"The Land of Blue Skies"

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 01:04:37 -0400

Peace Corps asked us to put a disclaimer on our blogs:

Disclaimer: Anything in this blog is not reflective of Peace Corps, the United Stated, or Mongolia. These are simply my personal opinions and the experiences I am going through as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Asian American foreigner.

In Darkhan, on the first few days of training, Rene and I ran around the city and went up to this Buddha statue and I had a “I wish I had my camera moment.” So after dinner,

we decided to take a little hike as the sun was setting. At the restaurant we went to, these were the dessert items:

Yup, pringles and chewing gum! hahaha On our way to the Buddha statues, we had to climb some stairs to cross this bridge,

then, we arrived to the statue!

Later that night, as we were playing mafia in the foyer, we hear that lanterns are being released in the sky! It was like the movie Tangled! But not as magical, because there weren’t that many…but we found out that they were celebrating Buddha’s birth and death, the first full moon in June. (I took a picture, but it’s just a black background and specks of light…so im not gonna waste 2 minutes to wait for it to load haha)

We have a 10 minute walk from our hotel to our school. Roads are uneven and it gets very dusty when it is windy. These past few days, it has rained for a few hours and has been fairly cold…haven’t felt the extreme summer weather yet!

We saw this on our way to school:

But it is common to see random bones of different sizes anywhere you walk.

This building is a 16 story building, that we were warned not to walk so closely to because people often throw things out the window. I’m wondering if a PCV has gotten hit in the past, which is why they have a disclaimer for us now hahah

During one of our cultural courses, we got to try some popular Mongolian foods:

The last item on the right is a boiled sheep/goat’s head. I ate the cheeks.. It’s weird to eat meat when you’re staring at the head…

On our last night in Darkhan, the trainers hosted a dance for us. Leah, JonCarlo, Lori and I were so tired and were only planning on staying for 5 minutes, but we ended up being one of the last to leave!

On our way to Selenge, north of Mongolia, we stopped at a shrine and took a group picture.

Then we all walked around these wishing wheels, where we have to spin each one 3 times and it is said that your wish will come true. The spinning of the wheels symbolizes the wish releasing into the heavens.

This is the scenery on our way:

The rain clouds started to roll in. On the right, you can kind of see the clouds coming down with the rain.

As we arrive, families are awaiting our arrival…so it turns out…as excited as I was for a greenhouse…i thought to myself when I got to my house…”oh…maybe they meant outhouse.” After trying to talk to my family and finding out about their professions and observing the house…I realize, everything that was on my assignment sheet was wrong! I was looking forward to the greenhouse, a family who loves to travel and likes to pick fruits on their free time; I ended up with a family without a dad, a brother who is 23 and is out all the time, a mom who loves watching tv, and a 5 year old that talks 24/7 :P

This is Namona working on the US map puzzle I got for her:

This is my room:

I have a JT poster up in my room for some reason, I swear I didn’t put it up!

These are some pictures of my neighborhood:

It’s not often that I see cows in the neighborhood. People’s yards (haashaa) have dogs and pigs.

The back building with the green roof is my school and the green house right across the street is my home!

Women dress very nicely here! They wear heels through these rough roads, put on makeup everyday, and wear nice clothes! We have to dress semi-professional to class everyday, to fit into their standards.

This is Namuuna watching Tom and Jerry in our living room!

There are quite a few American TV shows that are dubbed very poorly. You can hear the English version quietly in the background. Many Mongolians like watching Korean drama, including my host mom…but who doesn’t enjoy watching K Drama??

This is the kitchen:

My sink that doesn’t have running water. I use that little jar to the left of the spigot to wash my hands and face. I have to go outside to fetch water from a bigger jug we fill from the well 2 blocks away.

We also have a washing machine: behind the door on the left. However, with no running water, it is served as the hamper. Most families have these washing machines that look pretty new…but no one uses it! Maybe it was a government gift to everyone and no one knows how it works…not sure, but I will find out soon enough!

Oh…that little baby blue thing on the floor is the 5 year old’s toilet. They let her pee sit there for days…not sure where she goes to poo; I haven’t seen it in there yet! At least this is not as bad as Brittney’s little brother pooping on the floor! I’ll take a pic of my outhouse next time.

This is Tuulg (my brother’s girlfriend, 20), Namuuna, Kitaho (my fellow PC volunteer) and I fetching water from the well…which I didn’t expect to see a hose!

This is my dirty water after my bath (3 days after being in Suhkbaatar, the town in Selenge, the province):

Later that day, Tuulg and I went to drop off her dad at the train station. Her is heading to Ulaan Baatar (the main city and the capital) to see his daughter, who just had a newborn. He is staying there for 3 weeks to help take care of his new granddaughter.

This is what it looks like inside: The kid was traveling by himself! I wonder where his parents are…but on top, there is a bed that fold out. Underneath the seat is where you can store your stuff. If you decide to sleep on top, you have to be careful because people go around to steal your stuff beneath!

After her dad left, we went to her house, chopped some wood and we had a fashion show with her mother’s deel.

Mostly older country-side people wear these and it is also mostly worn in the winter. It keeps you very warm:

Tuulg is so awesome. She knows English fairly well, so she has been so kind to take me around and show me the lifestyle of a Mongolian. She left the other day to UB for an internship as a financial manager.

Last Sunday, we went back to Darkhan to get our second set of shots. On the way, we saw a mini landfill get burned. Some Mongolians take out the trash to their yards and burn it, even the plastic bags :(

I cried getting my 2nd set of shots because the nurse pricked…wait, stabbed…me with the needle, fumbled with the little jar the liquid comes in, and says “ooops, I gave you the wrong one.” I got scared and couldn’t hold in my tears. Never having her give me shots again…

I don’t know what happened to my memory card reader…but it just stopped working. I wanted to end with a nice photo..but I’ll just start with one next time!

I’m standing outside of our hotel with other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers), milking the free...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:00:32 -0400

I’m standing outside of our hotel with other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers), milking the free wifi from the building behind our hotel.

First day outside of Ulaan Baatar: We drove 40 minutes to our ger camp and this was the view from the inside. I had 3 roommates for the night and there was running water and a regular toilet in this one. It also had an electric heater, so not as legit as I thought it’d be. This was the view:

Tuesday, June 5th: Peace Corps Training has been pretty awesome! We stayed in Darkhan, 4 hours north of Ulaan Baatar in a hotel for our first 3 days of training and we’ll be splitting up into our sectors tomorrow to live with our host families tomorrow! It’s bittersweet that we all became so close just from these past few days and now we’ll be split up for the rest of training. I guess this is their way of preparing us and slowly transitioning us to be on our own for the next 2 years after training!

The picture above was pretty much what we saw the whole way to Darkhan…with a few soums (villages) that looked like ghost towns. What I found interesting was that there were plastic and glass bottles on the side of the road throughout the WHOLE trip…even out in the middle of nowhere! There was 1 bottle at least every 4 feet away. SGVCC: Ya’ll need to come out here to pick up the recyclables! :P Just kidding!

On our first day of training, we were welcomed with these signs:

And these are our trainers:

Gotta run! Breakfast is being served and we have a full day of training before we leave!

Today, we meet our host family for the first time! Can’t wait >.< My family has a greenhouse! (Score!)

Back on Tumblr

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 22:47:00 -0400

It’s been a long time since I last blogged, so I said, “why not start again with my first post about my feelings towards my trip to Mongolia for Peace Corps!”

I’m currently at the airport in Korea, where I had a layover and had my last running water shower in a hotel. Tonight, I’ll be living in a ger, something that looks similar to this:

69 service-minded people from all over the United States met up in San Francisco, where we had our pre-service training. Everyone is very nice, like-minded, and from all walks of life!

It didn’t hit me that this was a reality until I got onto my 13 hour flight from SF to Korea, when people were starting to freak out and have anxiety attacks. I don’t know if it’s normal for me to not feel anxious, but I’m surprising myself that I’m very calm and actually very excited.

Most volunteers heading to Mongolia will be English teachers and a handful of us will be Youth and Community Developers (which I’m super excited about!). The others are health educators and economic developers :). For the first 3 months, we’ll be staying with a Mongolian family, relatively close to the other volunteers and after that, it’s all a mystery! The exciting part of all of this is not knowing where I will be staying after the first three months and what my living conditions will be like!

People often times ask me if I chose to go to Mongolia and I think to myself “who or why in the world would anyone choose Mongolia?!?” but I’m actually very excited about it. My first choice was to be in a Latin American country because one of my goals in life is to become fluent in Spanish, but nope, they’ll send me somewhere else to learn a whole new language! On my application, the only reservation I wrote down was that I get cold very easily… -___- The first thing people say to me when I tell them I’m headed to Mongolia is, “good luck with the cold!” My main fear right now is literally freezing to death in the winter time. I hope that the clothes my lovely family (Jack, Kathy, Kieu, Tracy, Lyly, Lysa, Teddy, Tomy, Eleni, Jenny, San, and Mrs. Foster) and friend, Daniel, bought for me will be warm enough to get me through the winters that get as cold as -40. THANKS FOR THE GIFTS!

I’m not sure when I can write my next blog. I hear that some gers have landlines that run through it, which means it could be a possibility of having internet daily! Other volunteers only have access once a month, by traveling to some sort of internet cafe. I’ll be happy with whatever I get :)

Shout out to the graduates of 2012 at UCSB and the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps (where I worked the past 6 months). Congratulations, you all did it!!! <3

My outlook on life and especially these next 27 months: “Everything happens for a reason” and if it doesn’t go my way, it’s a “Blessing in disguise.”

Until next time, please email/write to me these next 2 years to keep me in the loop and to keep me entertained! :) Thank you Carla, Jing, Nina, Mae, Andrea, Angelina, and Emily for my scrapbook…I’ll be reading it over and over on those days I get lonely! I’ll blog my postal address when I get my permanent address in 3 months. Can’t wait for some snail mail! :P

Peace, Love, and Smiles,
Anna

60 Inconvenient Personal Development Truths from http://www.marcandangel.com/

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 02:28:55 -0500

Hack Life:

I know you want to be the best you can be. We all do. But sometimes we look for success in the wrong places or we try to achieve it in the wrong ways.

Here are 60 inconvenient truths about personal development to help you stay on track.

The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean you’re growing. Growing happens when what you know changes how you live.
You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.
A good idea without action is nothing at all.
It’s not so much about finding opportunities as it is about creating them.
10% of our lives is decided by uncontrollable circumstances. 90% is decided by how we react to those circumstances.
What we don’t start today won’t be finished by tomorrow.
If you’re waiting for the perfect conditions, ideas or plans to get started, you’ll never achieve anything.
If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
Change is often resisted when it is needed the most.
Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want right now. Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The harder you work, the luckier you will become.
Kindness and hard work together will always carry you farther than intelligence.
Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.
Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.
Lots of successful people have failed as many times as they have succeeded.
Nobody succeeds all by themselves.
Right now, there’s a lot you don’t know.
Having a plan, even a flawed one at first, is better than no plan at all.
In the beginning, you need to say “yes” to a lot of things to discover and establish your goals. Later on, you need to say “no” to a lot of things and concentrate on your goals.
No matter how you make a living or who you think you work for, you only work for one person, yourself. The big question is: What are you selling, and to whom?
We all have different strengths. What worked for someone else might not work for you.
To be great does not mean you have to dominate others. It means you have to dominate your own potential.
Being successful is a journey, not a destination.
Results are more important than the time it takes to achieve them.
Being busy and being productive are two different things.
Being happy and being successful are two different things.
You don’t have to settle. It’s simply a choice you make every day.
Life is full of opportunities to feel exactly the way you want to feel.
You have every right to be happy, but it’s up to YOU and only YOU to exercise that right. Read The Happiness Project.
You have the ability to clear negativity from your mind with a single thought.
We are all multi-dimensional human beings with simultaneous dimensions of success and failure in our lives.
Your success isn’t just about you. It’s about how you positively impact the lives around you.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do.
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else – you are the one who gets burned.
Life isn’t always logical.
When you spend time worrying, you’re simply using your imagination to create things you don’t want.
It’s usually only as good or bad as you think it is.
There is a lesson in everything you do, and learning the lesson is how you move forward.
No matter how smart you are, you will make mistakes.
There’s no such thing as ‘risk free.’ Everything you do or don’t do has an inherent risk.
Saying “no” to right people gives you the time and resources required to say “yes” to right opportunities.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
When you’re caught up in the moment and your emotions are soaring, you’re bound to make poor decisions.
Simplicity is often a major factor of success. But the process of simplifying things is rarely easy.
Cutting your losses is often better than the alternative.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo, but it’s worth it.
You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it. Either way, it’s getting raised.
Oftentimes, the only reason they want you to fit in is that once you do they can ignore you and go about their business.
Confusion isn’t a bad thing. It means you’re growing and thinking.
When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
Trying to be somebody you’re not is not sexy. Be you. That’s when you’re beautiful.
Good looks attracts the eyes. Personality attracts the heart.
Sometimes you just have to do your own thing your own way, no matter what anyone else thinks or says about you.
When you receive negative feedback, remember, it doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it, it matters how many do. Read The 4-Hour Workweek.
If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
Truly ‘rich’ people need ‘less’ to be happy.
A good life is when you assume nothing, do more, need less, smile often and realize how fortunate you are right now.
If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.
If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.

And remember, the extra mile is the stretch of road that’s never crowded. As long as you follow your heart and never stop learning, you’ll turn not older, but newer every day.

Start of my Senior Year

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 07:06:10 -0500

4 years ago, I probably wasn’t up this late, but I can’t believe my whole undergraduate career has passed before my eyes. From moving in myself into the Freshmen Summer Start Program to trying to put together an Asian American Graduation Ceremony…everything in between and that’s going to happen before I graduate…I know I will not regret. The stresses and lack of sleep always comes with my curiosity and wanting to try everything that I have a slight interest in. I’m really thankful for my close friends and family who have been there to support, encourage, and inspire me to do everything that I do.

I got to do/try almost everything that I’ve wanted to do as a college student at UCSB: Join a Volunteer organization, join cultural clubs, be an emcee for an event, acted on stage, perform choreographed dances, pledge a sorority (i tried for a month…just wasn’t for me), study abroad, be a chair (or co-chair) of an organization, play intramural sports (flag football and basketball) attend conferences away from UCSB, have internships, biked to downtown and back, slept on the beach, and to be a mentor/big sister.

I still want to try surfing since we practically live on the beach, but maybe that can be a future goal of mine. I actually really wanted to be an RA, so that I could help to shape first year students and be resourceful to them, but unfortunately, I only got an alternate position—at least I tried. Being a Chi (big sis in Vietnamese) and Ate (big sis in Tagalog) has been a better experience for me and I wouldn’t have traded getting little siblings over being an RA. Fortunately for me, everything happens for a reason. Since I didn’t get the RA job, I had the opportunity to study abroad, something I wished that everyone was able to experience.

I questioned whether or not I should participate in the Vietnamese Culture Night this year, since I already have a busy schedule with work, orgs, research, classes, and side projects, and I’ve come to realize that (although I wanted to do this to get closer with my roommates) this is something I have to do because it is part of who I am and my memories of my college experience. This would be my fourth year in VCN and I hope that it will be the best. Every year, I’ve at least participated in a cultural dance and hip hop. This year, I want to continue my traditions and bring it back to my first year, by doing a little acting as well.

This is going to be one heck of a busy year…but I’ll never have these opportunities again so I have to make the best of it. I’ve been running lately, trying to train for a 5 mile race and have found that I’ve had more energy to stay up later. I also feel healthier, so I must continue! I’m at 3 miles (caught up to my cross country days).

If you read all this, thanks for all your unconditional support and for always being there for me.

Back to Where I was Born

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:27:34 -0500

Before I start my post, I’d like to let my followers know that I will blog the rest of my Europe trip (including being attacked by a gypsy, stung by a jellyfish, and having the best summer ever!!) after I finish all my college applications. I have my Peace Corps interview at 9:00am, wish me luck!

Blog Post for NUFP 2011 Conference Stipend App

Hi! My name is Anna Giang and I am a fourth year at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I am a Sociology major and Asian American studies and Education double minor. I am involved in multiple organizations on campus, which makes me a resourceful friend because I like to get others involved, especially with my volunteer events. I am the Childcare Director of the Community Affairs Board, a student-run volunteer organization; the Treasurer for Best Buddies, a non-profit organization that fosters one-to-one friendships with people with and without intellectual disabilities; a member of the Vietnamese Student Association and Kapatirang Pilipino (even though I am not Vietnamese or Filipino); a McNair scholar; and a NUFP Fellow, which I have Va’Shajn Parr as my mentor. On top of that I am a part-time Instructional Aide at an after school program, working with kindergarten and first graders!

I love to be involved, to feel like I am making a difference in my community, and to help people find a passion for volunteering as well. For this reason, my ultimate goal after college is to join the Peace Corps or get into graduate school for Student Affairs, Public Service Administration, or Community Development. I am currently working on my applications to apply to those three fields, and I am starting to wonder how my colleagues were able to be involved, apply, and be accepted last year! (Side note: If you are a 3rd year, start earlier!!!) Although I have descent grades, I have done most of my learning and growing through my involvement in organizations. This is the reason why I am so interested in helping others find a passion in some form of community involvement.

I am really excited for March to come around. Through my involvement in NUFP, I have been given the opportunity to attend the 2011 NASPA National Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am looking forward to meeting other students and professions that have the same passions as I do, learning about the history and professions of Student Affairs, how to be an effective educator in educating lives of purpose, and bringing it all back to UCSB. It is a bonus that it happens to take place in the city I was born, since I have not been back since I was 6 years old.

The itinerary for the four-day conference is so packed, but I am ecstatic to soak everything up and attend as many workshops and education sessions as possible. I am glad that 3 other UCSB NUFP Fellows will be joining me, that way we can all choose different workshops and convene at the end of the night to share what we learned to get the most out of this conference. I like to take notes and share my experiences of places I get to travel, so I’ll be sure to blog about my stay in Philadelphia!

Barcelona --> Last week of EAP Spain...

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:04:59 -0400

July 22nd to 25th, trip to Barcelona, a metropolitan city. Thanks to Ryan Air’s flight delays, we arrived at 2am with no map.

Our cribs…i mean beds in my 2nd hostel:

Plaza de Catalunya, a 5 minute walk from our hostel:

She got the birds to land on her hands!! soo lucky…Imma try this next time…

The first of Gaudi’s work that we encountered: Casa Batllo

Didn’t want to pay to go in, so I took a picture of pictures of the inside :P

a building under construction…it almost got you fouled, huh?

A pretty lamp with Casa Mila in the background, aka La Pedrera:

Since D-Pak has a pic of this building in his tumblr, I figured I’d put up a better one. :P

This guy cut the sides of a can and folded each strip to make…

ASHTRAYS! Pretty environmental, eh??

In front of the Sagrada Familia. It’s been in construction for like 80 years or so…Gaudi worked on it for 40 years before he died, and now they’re trying to finish it the way Gaudi would have built it. It was the last thing he worked on before he passed away. People thought he was crazy for trying to construct it, no one knew what he was up to really…and now they are trying to finish his work for him:

The inside:

Lauren and I in the back of Sagrada Familia, listening to the history.

This is what it’s suppose to look like when it’s all done

The hike up to Park Güell, thank goodness there were escalators the whole way up!

The view from the top:

What the Sagrada Familia looks like from afar:

The Park, created by Mr. Gaudi himself…

Sitting on the longest bench in the world, it wraps all the way around (you can kind of see people sitting on it on the left)

the other side of the bench:

Doesn’t this look like I’m about to get hit?

Exploring Barcelona:

Chocolate Museum:

these are made of CHOCOLATE :O

The most awkward cutout:

In the Picasso Museum…Piacsso’s work of La Menina

Swimming in the Mediterranean Sea…sooooo warm!

Art by the beach…looking for food.

Statue of Christopher Columbus pointing at Libya…he’s really suppose to be pointing to the Americas…what dummies :P

Finally got some flavor in my life in Spain…All you can eat Chinese/Japanese food…sooo yummy.

We were trying to get our monies worth and by the time we went out, the sun was setting!

Las Ramblas, the most popular street in Barcelona, with shops, restaurants, and more

Back in Madrid…Las Tablas, fieldtrip to the bar with Flamenco dancing:

No flash, so it’s kinda blurry…

Wednesday fieldtrips with culture class to Museo de Reina Sofia, home of the original Guernica.

Palacio Real (Royal Palace, not Real Palace :P)

The epic battle outside the palace

Inside the palace…pictures are forbidden. That’s the security gaurd’s hands at the bottom of the picture, trying to stop me from getting this shot HAHAHA

The ceiling of one of the rooms…

The gaurd told me there was 4,800 rooms in the palace…welcome to my future house!

The dining table…it must have been a hastle to ask to pass something down…probably would take a minute or two to get to them :P

In the Real Armeria…i thought i read Real America…and i asked one of the guards “Este es el Real America?” and she was like “Que? No se…No hay un Real Armerica aqui…” and then I was like “Pues, donde estamos ahora?” “este is el Real Armeria”…”Jajaja Yo lei ‘real america’” and we just started laughing together. It’s great to see people who look serious all the time laugh :D

look at the gaurd walking this way to kick us off LoL

Walking towards Gran Via on our last weekend in Madrid…

Went to check out the Faro de Moncloa, to get a good view of Madrid…but it temporarily closed because there is no emergency exit in there, and they are currently working on making that happen.

this is how it usually is everywhere we go. We go places with lots of people and we lolligag a lot.

Since that was fail, we went to Circulo de Bellas Artes to get a beautiful view

just chillen…soaking it all in…

As the sun sets…

Los Cibeles

Reminded me Gaudi’s work from Barcelona.

Off to Ibiza, didn’t have time to blog about my final week here in Madrid…I’m really sad that this is over, I met many great people, and had a blast…I’ll update this thing very soon, hopefully :)

3 weeks in 1 blog

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:26:00 -0400

I’m probably the fattest procrastinator alive. I have a research paper to write and all I can think about is wanting to blog…so here it goes:

The European currency (missing the 500 euro):

El Tigre: buying Cerveza con Limon for just 2 euros can get you a whole plate of Tapas (snacks that come with your purchase of a beverage):

At the Caixa Forum, (where photography is not allowed):

the view from my (fl)abs:

How did Dr. King say all the great quotes in life?

This wall has over 15,000 plants from 250 different species in Madrid!

Watching the semi-final game with some friends. Great BBQ, great view, great night:

The metro ride back after the win:

The bus ride to La Coruna, Galcia with the EAPers: Weekend fieldtrip (July 8-11) to northern Spain: 6 hour bus ride:

The hotel lobby:

Everyone in the same hotel:

The tiny bathroom, you have to sit sideways to pee/poo:

The hotel at night:

Learning how to dance by the beach (Gallagan style):

The dead, but pretty bar we went to the first night. Had much more fun here the 2nd night:

The beach at night:

Santiago de Compestella: The avatar?

He reallly wanted me to take a picture of him:

Lunch break at the park…havent been on a see-saw in a couple of years…

The cross-guard :P

It is said that if you turn around 3 times and point at this from behind you, it tells you your profession in the future:

The boy made a really cool paper airplane that glided so smoothly in the air…reminded me of the Kite Runner:

Xelmirez Palace:

Hacky sack reminds me of the good old Cross Country days…

If you zoom in on this picture, you may see some topless women:

San Andres de Taixido:

A Garita de Herbeira (the highest bluffs in Europe)

getting up close and personal with the cows:

(I’m not really touching its ass…)

The Tower of Hercules:

The Compass Rose at La Coruna

For dinner, D Pak, Lauren, Jen and I went to eat at this really nice restaurant where the floors changed colors and we can see the kitchen…it was the cheapest, nicest dinner I’ve had in Spain!

Back in time for the The Final Game at Las Cibeles— July 11th: Where were you when Spain won the world cup?? Answer: In Spain, bit*H!

It was so hot, they used fire hoses to cool us down!

One girl was on her man’s shoulders and someone in the crowd chucked a beer can at her head…LMAO teaches her to be more considerate next time!

The streets after the victory! 10x crazier than DP on Halloween…

July 12th, The Parade—Waiting for the Champions of the World to come by:

This guy gave the Champs a pulpo! everyone was shouting: “Viva el pulpo!”

Here they come! (stupid bottle…)

Alonso is so good looking…and Torres and Villa tooo….

Then Howie and friends (Andrew, Tony, and Jon) came for a few days, and I showed them around and saw things I haven’t seen before:

Tony couldn’t handle the heat.

The Fountain at Plaza de Espana

My study area in the library…yess, i actually do study while it seems like I’ not even here for school:

El Museo del Prado…taking sneaky pictures again (view from my belly):

Duplicate! (try to ignore the man’s head):

Weekend destination: Rome, Italy:

After the cold, cold airplane ride, we arrived in the hot and humid city of Rome by bus:

My very first hostel:

Vincent being a true Roman with his Toga on. hahaha Sorry, had to put this on since you de-tagged yourself!

The Vatican from the Outside:

We had to wear long pants and cover our shoulders to get into the Sistine Chapel, which is inside the Vatican. It was sooooo freaking hot. I wished I wore my knee-long skirt…I didn’t think about it.

My favorite painting in the Vatican:

The group…walking around was so difficult bc we had to wait for everyone every stop we took. But look! I met up with Peterson, he’s in the back :)

The Sistine Chapel (pictures snapped from the angle of my belly again):

The group at St. Peter’s Square:

On the inside:

It was so hot and we were so exhausted from being at the Vatican for over 8 hours by now…i fell asleep just resting there! Good thing I brought my skirt to change into…

At the Spanish Steps:

Down one of the streets in Rome, walking from site to site, fountain to fountain…

We ate Gelato 2 to 3 times a day….sooo yummmy. Look at the bouquet!

The Oh-so-beautiful Trevi Fountain

I just like this picture I took of Jen :P

At the stupid plaza where I was attacked by the scary looking gypsy…but at least I got a fire show out of it…

The walk along the river:

It kind of looks like the Colosseum…but it’s not. Do you see the floating carriage?

The Vittoriano at 4:00 am. Jen, Daniel, and i were the last ones standing Friday night. So glad we did most of the site seeing at night. At this hour, it was still like 85 degrees and humid…

At the Colosseum the next day at 10:00am.

Hahah, jk, here’s the real deal:

From the inside…very different from what I imagined it to be…where are the bleachers/seats that they sat on to watch the fights??

At the Ruins resting at EVERY shadey area we spot…hahah

So throughout Rome, there are running faucets (it’s such a waste of water, but it’s a must because of the scorching heat…) and I refill my canteen, and if I don’t have it, i just cup the water and drink it like so:

And then, Dawn told me she saw people stopping the faucet with their finger, and there was a hole at the top of them…and BAM it turns into a water fountain! Cool, huh??

The Ultimate drinking fountain:

Thought that this was intesting…

Tour de Italy? hahah jk

Las Ventas/Plaza de Toros: Back in Madrid, right in time to watch the bullfight:

The guys with the pink flag puncture the bull with big darts because when there blood starts spilling out, they get an adrenaline rush and are more aggressive.

These horses are blinded and the bull is tricked to go towards the horse so that the guy on the horse can puncture the bull even more:

The one with the red flag is the Matador and the one who needs to spear the bull at the right spot…the first bull had blood gushing out of its mouth and nose :( the second was spastic, and the third was a fighter…and the Matador just needs to continue to stab the bull in the spine until it passes out. I didnt stay for the 3-6th bulls.

Then when the Matador kills the bull, a horse comes to pull it out of the rink :(

Wednesday fieldtrips: To Chamberi Metro stop…one of the very first metro stations:

There advertisements were made of tiles back then…

On an adventure to find the outdoor movie theater on my own…Here’s the Planetarium:

The view of the city:

If it only came out clearer, this would have been a pretty shot:

Next stop…Barcelona. Will try to upload those by the end of this weekend…maybe I’ll try to finish all my hw and research paper first :P

SMELLY HUG!

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:06:16 -0400

One REALLY long blog. Read when you are bored :P

June 26: Excursion to Segovia with the Madrid EAPers:

The Roman Aqueduct in Segovia:

The better picture between Dan Dan and I

Catedral de…no se!

Money in my castle bank!

Too bad UCSB’s bike locks aren’t this advanced:

A modern day Knight parade? or something like that…this view overlooks the city:

This castle supposedly inspired Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s castle!

From the inside:

View from the top of the castle:

The spiraling stairs:

Zakiya and Sherry’s suckling pig with the foot still attached:

Why is this more sad than the pig bigs Asians eat for special occassions?

Last Wednesday: Museo de Sorolla

Beautiful paintings…

The bus ride to Granada…the start of our crazy weekend:

The first of many public teeth-brushings for Elisa, Mary-Yess, and I :P

Napping at the bus station at 4:30 am while we wait for things to open and for the other group of people to arrive.

On an adventure at 6:30AM:

The group after the split: the other group went towards their hostel.

The next Top Models :P

The hike in Albaizyn to see the great view of La Alhambra

The View…it looks even better at night when it’s all lit up:

Los Cuartos de los CHINOS!

The hike up to La Alhambra

Dan-Dan our Navigator:

Too big to see the whole thing…

National Geographic Status:

Ever wonder what the back of a peacock looks like?

Dike (Daniel and Mike) and I with the city behind us.

Inside La Alhambra:

The roof of one of the palaces:

The llama is walking the hills :P

Pondering about how fortunate and privileged I am to be able to study/travel in Spain and its surrounding areas.

Look at Jessica on the right LOL

The 10-bed hostel: Siesta time…so exhausting walking around everywhere..

At a Teteria with our new friend, Muhammed:

The amazing FREE Crep with our pretty tasty teas :)

The Submarine: Alhambra beer with an upside down shot of tequilla with some kind of red syrup. When you sip, a little bit of tequilla gets released from the shot glass. I dislike when people pull the UCSB card on me…no I can’t drink a freaking huge cup of beer, so stop challenging me!

The beautiful streets of Granada at night:

Small streets, great possibilities of getting run over

The taxi ride to the bus station…3AM towards Sevilla:

We had the whole town of Sevilla to ourselves at 7AM:

In front of the Catedral:

Inside the Catedral:

Christopher Columbus’ tomb:

This is about where we got yelled by a tour guide, in front of her whole tour group. I napped on Jessica’s lap while her and Elisa were chatting, oops, didn’t mean to disrespect, but I was so exhausted… :(

The upgrade from torch to electricity :P

The views from the top of Torre de Giralda:

The walk along the river…feeling really nasty, sticky, and exhausted by this time:

Creeper shot of the blog…I wished i had the guts and the extra clothes to jump into this river…

One of many breaks throughout the day on Saturday:

My carriage awaits me…

Waiting for my prince :P

On the way to dinner and sitting on the side of the river to watch the futbol game.

This is all we wanted to do by the end of the day in Sevilla…

We had a 4 hour (3AM to 7AM Sunday morn) layover in Granada, from Sevilla to Madrid, so we decided to taxi it back into town. Had my first Kebab…so DELICIOUSSS! n then went into a closed bar (really sketch) and listened to Mariachi and clapped to Flamenco… We had a crazy-ass weekend…

When we got back to Madrid and departed from the bus/metro station, we gave each other a smelly hug :)

Today, just came back from…

Paddling at Parque de Retiro! Only 1 euro!

A sign at La Alhambra in Granada:

Dan: “Don’t mess with a girl or she’ll break you!”

This weekend, we head to Galicia with EAPers…I shall have my camera fully charged.

GOoOoOOAALLLL!

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:57:00 -0400

I finally stayed out until 6am like the Spaniards do in order to take the metro and not a taxi! It’s so easy to get into clubs and bars for free and even get free drinks here! There’s so much competition in Puerto del Sol, we had promoters trying to convince us and pull us in different directions. Last night was so fun AND I’m super proud of myself because I did something I’ve been wanting to do while I was here. I educated some Spaniards about how it’s racist to say “Ni Hao” to Asian people because not everyone is Chinese and they don’t understand Mandarin. I had the whole conversation with them in Spanish!! and they were so glad that I told them and were amazed at all the different Asian identities we had within our group lol. Anyway, here’s my week:

Monday was my first day of class. The teacher is hilarious! He speaks a little English and some of his actions are really goofy.

After school, I went to Jen’s place, and this is what her room looks out to (soooo jealous…):

We went to the stadium to watch the Honuras vs. Spain game on big TV screens…it was so wild! It was definitely a great experience. The metro was sooo packed after the game, people were pushing and singing and chanting, it was great.

Tuesday: Jen, Shelby, Nat, Lauren and I went shopping after class. It wasn’t the greatest of ideas. It’s now starting to get super hot and I gotta start packing on the sunscreen. We spent too much dinero.

We went into this market area and saw a nasty fish :P and yummy desserts/foods:

Wednesday: We had a fieldtrip to the Museo de Arqueologico for our culture class:

We strolled the town look for fiestas. Michael’s seniora said that there was going to be something at El Parque de Retiro, but it was pretty dead. Got some nice pictures though.

Thursday: I took a 4 hour siesta afterschool and it helped me to stay up until 7AM this morning.

Natalie and I decided to go out even though it was 80 degrees with rain, thunder and lightening. We had Churros con Chocolate for the first time last night:

We went into a few diff bars/discotecas and I played hide n seek around Sol with Daniel, Nate, Peter, and Will—lmao, fun night…hahaha

Today: I went to talk to the Chinese lady across the street. It’s funny that when I speak Mandarin to my mom, I fill in the words that I don’t know with English words, and with this lady, I fill in those words with Spanish words. There was this 20 year old girl that I met who was speaking fluently in Spanish to the customers…was so jealous, but she moved here when she was 12.

I went to Palacio Real:

Watched the game from home today because it started to hella rain, but those crazy Spaniards were still out there watching it in the rain! On game day, everyone dresses up, even baby Manuela:

She dances when you say “Es-pana, es-pana, es-pana” You can hear everyone screaming outside, cars honking and natalie and i screamed GOOAALLLLLLL outside the window of our 6th floor apartment.