Hello from Mongolia!: 2010

Monday, August 2, 2010

Final week in Mongolia :(

Hello everyone,

On Friday morning, we were exhausted from the night before and decided to take the day off from work and go to the orphanage instead. We met up with Laurence, Will, Olivia and Scott for breakfast and then headed over to the orphanage. It was fun as usual. The kids are so cute. Jess was very proud of Mathilda, who was engaged with the children and even playing hide and seek with them. There were two US marines (not Kevin, he went home to Hawaii) who were playing with the kids too. One was playing guitar and the other gave his giant marine boots to one of the little kids, who put them on and was walking around in them. Mathilda and Olivia attempted to put up a curtain, but failed and left the job to the boys. Jess' favorite kid was depressed and she also failed in trying to cheer him up. Will, Scott and Thom had been trying to fix a table for over an hour, without success, when a little kid came along and fixed it in a second. Later that day we went for coffee/tea with Amy and Crystal. That night we had a quick dinner with Amy, Laurence, Scott and Will and then walked them to the train station. They went to the north of Mongolia for a week.

Saturday morning, we went to the Dream Hotel spa. Although the name makes it sound a little trashy, it was actually really nice. We got an hour massage, 40 minute body scrub and sauna all for 20000 tugriks; roughly 14 Canadian dollars. It was amazing, especially the 3 layers of skin that were removed, including the layer of dust left over from the Gobi. Then we went to the Projects Abroad weekend activity which was a basketball game. Obviously, we sat at the side and talked. We met some new volunteers; Zee from the Netherlands and Joan from the US. We went with them, Olivia and Lena to Cafe Amsterdam for lunch and then met up with more volunteers at MB's for a beer. We then went to an Indian restaurant, Hazara, for dinner. It was really good. After that, we went to Lena's apartment with Olivia, Jessica (from Windsor, ON) and Matt (from Manchester) to watch a DVD that we had bought for 2 dollars (The Last Station) because her host family had gone to the countryside. On our way to Lena's apartment, Jessica got hit by a drunk biker in the middle of an emotional speech. She was okay and thought it was really funny. When we got there, we accidentally got locked in the living room. There is this girl who rents out a room in their apartment and she came home. When Lena heard the door opening, she freaked out that she had people in the house and told everyone to hide. Everyone, realizing that we were 6 people, one of us being a 6 foot 2 guy, were not going to be able to hide. We look over and Lena is hiding. We explained to her that they would still find 5 foreigners in their bedroom/living room and that, considering it was her house and she was allowed to be there, it was ridiculous for her to hide. The girl who lives there hates Lena because one time, Lena called home and asked to speak to "the girl who lives in the room", when it was actually her on the phone. The girl called Lena's host mother and told her that Lena had lots of people over for a party and had locked themselves in her room. Lena got an angry text message from her host mother saying that she was coming home. We all left right away. Everything worked out with her host mother, but it was super funny while it lasted.

Sunday morning, we met Olivia, Lena and Hannah for lunch at Narya Cafe. It was really good. We met Zee at the State Department Store and we all went to the Winter Palace of Bogd Khan; a museum/monastery. We went for an early dinner at our host grandmother's house. The cute kid was there and we had a really good time. We saw pictures of Ali's prom when she went on an exchange in Alabama. After, we went for another dinner at Marco Polo, a pizza place, for Jessica's goodbye dinner. It was really sad. In the Lonely Planet Mongolia the description for Marco Polo says that "you shouldn't let the kiddies wander because Ulaanbaatar's most notorious strip club is right upstairs."

Today, Monday morning, we went to work. We saw a few surgeries, the best one was a reconstruction on a kid with a cleft palate. Jess got to bathe a sick baby in the PICU, she enjoyed it a lot. We helped with taking temperatures and adjusting monitors. Mathilda had a special moment with the cleft lip/palate baby (not the one from surgery, the one in the PICU). The baby has some neurological problems that make it difficult for her to track her eyes. We met Lena, Olivia and Zee at Cafe Amsterdam after work. We all went to Projects Abroad together to try to claim some money for our visa extensions and also to help Olivia complain about her host family. Basically, she sleeps on the floor of the living room where the 2 year old demon-child pees, poops and chunders (UK word for vomit). They use the same rag to clean it every time and just use water. The kid has a personal vendetta against Olivia; she pulls her hair, steals her phone, broke her charger, etc. Olivia has a phobia of raisins (we make fun of her a lot), and the kid spat a chewed up raisin in her drink (that was the final straw). The family lied to PA and told them that the room they sleep in with a bed would be Olivia's room. Olivia is the nicest person in the world and would never complain about anything, so she didn't say anything about her situation. Everybody in PA is guaranteed a bed and their own room at the very least. Also, she has no money left and has been living off 5000 tugrik for the past week (3 dollars). So we went with her to try to get some money out of PA as compensation. After a few hours, they gave her 20000 tugrik and told her that she should call when she4 gets home (Wednesday) and get some more money back. After PA, we went with her to buy her food for the 9 hours she will be spending in the airport in Seoul. She was extremely reluctant to accept our food (which only came to 2600 tugriks), but was eventually grateful. She plans to hide it very well from the demon child. Tonight, after we had dinner, we made pancakes with our host family with real Canadian maple syrup. They loved them. It was a really difficult task to find baking powder in Ulaanbaatar though, we had to go to a special store that only sells European goods; we bought Backpulver from Germany.

Looks like we will be able to manage one more post after this before we leave. See you all soon!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Another busy week in Ulaanbaatar

Hello from Mongolia!

So since we have gotten back from the Gobi we have been pretty busy. On Sunday we went shopping for gifts (for you maybe?). That night we put up pictures, hope you saw them.

On Monday, Mathilda started work at the Central Mongolian Hospital in the Emergency department. She saw a lot of patients there, however, she was their first volunteer ever, so they were not used to it. They also didn't speak enough English to explain what was going on.

Tsene, our PA staff, could only bring one of us to our new hospitals at once, so Jess did not go to the pediatric hospital on Monday. Instead she went to the Memorial Museum of Victims of Political Persecution in the morning and then met up with Laurence and Will for lunch. We went to an orphanage in the afternoon, where Thom, another volunteer works. Before going, we went to get Laurence a change of clothes (he was dressed nice from being at work in the morning) and Will accidentally got himself locked out of his apartment. His host family was, and still is, out of town indefinitely. He has been finding different houses to sleep at all week. He was also wearing white shorts and a white shirt, they are both brownish-grey now from the being in the orphanage dust everyday this week. Anyway, the orphanage was amazing, they have the cutest kids. We are going on Friday afternoon to volunteer there again. After the orphanage we all (us and about 15 others) for an Indian meal. It was really good. We went to the Sky lounge after for drinks.

On Tuesday, Mathilda went back to her hospital, where she decided she didn't want to go back. Meanwhile, Jess was supposed to be picked up at 9:30 by a PA staff named Amra. He is known to be very irresponsible and flaky. At 10:30, she called Tsene to tell her Amra hadn't showed, later we found out that Amra had been sleeping because the director was out of town. Tsene brought Jess to the pediatric hospital, only to find that the supervisor she had been assigned was not there. So Mathilda left work and both of us decided to be productive and go see some of the sights we had been meaning to see. We went to the Mongolian National History Museum, it was very interesting. After we went to a monastery called the Choijin Lama Temple Museum, where we saw a traditional concert. That night, we went to Tengis movie theatre with Amy and Crystal. We saw a 3D cartoon (yes, they have 3D in Mongolia) called Despicable Me, it was really funny and cute. At the movie, they have assigned seats, weird. Also, they had the most hilarious video before the movie about the 3D glasses and what you should not do with them. It was all in Mongolian, which for us, obviously added to the humour. They had a guy doing all the things you shouldn't do with the glasses, like: chewing on them, spilling drinks on them, stealing them for your 3D TV at home and putting it in someone else's purse so that they set off the alarms when they leave the theatre.

Yesterday, we both went to the Pediatric Hospital. We are working in intensive care and we have a really funny doctor as our supervisor. We got to take temperatures and help with blood pressure and IVs. Also, there was a baby with a cleft palate that Jess fed water, it was sad because he kept choking. In the afternoon, we went to the Gobi Cashmere factory store. It was huge and they had such nice stuff. That night, we went for dinner with the group at the Silk Road Bar and Grill. After, we went to MB Bar for drinks and then went home.

Today we got to the hospital early so we could see surgeries. We saw a little girl having a cyst removed; it was in her throat beneath her tongue. We saw the end of a major surgery (there were about 15 people in the room, some with video cameras), it was a pelvic tumor. It was a big deal because the tumor was a teratoma. We also saw them removing supernumerous teeth and we saw a tonsillectomy. Another volunteer, Jessica, who had been working at the hospital for the past month showed us around the hospital. She showed us where all the operating rooms are and told us about all the patients in the ICU and what was wrong with them. We met her favorite patient, a baby girl with Meningitis, whose name means rabbit in Mongolian. This afternoon, we went to the National Modern Art Gallery. It was really good. Tonight, we are going to a fancy restaurant called Monet's for Amy and Laurence's goodbye dinner. We are going to the Sky lounge after for drinks and then going to Strings to dance and party! They are by far our favorite people here and we are depressed that they are leaving. :(

Seeing as we are only going to be here for one more week, we will probably only blog one more time. Stay tuned for the last blog!