More city exploring

Here are some interesting facts about Mongolia and its capital city, Ulaanbaatar:

Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the entire world! The country holds only about 3 million people; this is about how many people are in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area! Ulaanbaatar, the city that Matt and I live in, is by far the largest city in the country and holds about 1/3 of the entire country's population!!! Here is a map of where our city is in relation to other parts in Mongolia:

We did some more UB exploration last month:

Here is a park near our apartment. Looks like a great picnic spot come summer! There are many interesting children's' parks around the city. I will take more pictures so that you can see the wide variety of park equipment they play on.

Here is a view of some of the city and some of the vehicles we often see. People have a huge variety of cars here, and we get a first hand experience with that when we ride in the taxis. Here's something I really enjoy about UB: taking a taxi is cheap, quick, and warm. Anyone can be a taxi driver and most of them just use their own car and they charge about $2.50 to get halfway across town. All you have to do to get a taxi is hold out your hand (palm down) and a taxi will pick you up usually in less than a minute! And when its very frigid out, taxis provide a comfortable and cozy atmosphere to get to the apartment. It's also very interesting to see how they decorate their car (lots of dangling things from the mirror and various Buddhist relics) and what music they listen to; it is usually either traditional Mongolian or American or Mongolian pop. There are official taxis with specific taxi logos on the car, but they are sometimes more expensive and not as numerous; we usually don't take those. One time that we did ride in one, the front seat had a T.V. built into it, but there was only one commercial that played over and over again.

You can see the Blue Sky Tower (the sail shaped building, the tallest in Mongolia) on the left.

There is a large staircase leading up to a ger district near our house and we thought it might give us a better view of the city. I guess this street pup had the same idea! You can see Gandan monastery sticking out on the left side of the picture, I think I read somewhere that it is the largest monastery in Mongolia. It's a fun place to hang out, more pictures there later! This also gives a good sense of what the traffic is like here.

I discovered that I already had a program on my computer that can stitch together panoramic photos! Here is a great view of the city (you may need to scroll over to the right a bit). If you notice how many cars appear multiple times in a row, this is because the same car is moving along as I took many pictures. Don't worry, identical cars don't travel in packs here!

Here is what we found on the top of the stairs. I think this is a type of open sewer system for the outhouses; it smelled pretty nasty. It might also be from the bathwater. You can see liquid had flowed from the fence into the sewer and then froze.

I look a little snoopy in this picture. I hope no one saw me trying to peek into their yard! :) 

We decided to enter the ger district. We were wandering around during the Tsagaan Sar holiday and got to encounter many people dressed in traditional clothing called "deel". More about the holiday and clothing later.

 This might be a ovoo, which is present on the top of basically every mountain or hill. It is a place where the earth and sky meet. Some people stop and walk around these and leave offerings of milk or vodka or other things for good luck.

 We came across this sign and Matt was able to read it with his mad Mongolian skillz (after we got home). It reads something like: main water source is contained inside
It was attached to this barbed wire fence, so we were very curious as to what lies within this protected area.

 Here is me after I climbed over the fence! Just kidding!!

 There are a lot of colorful sunsets here, most likely because of the pollution.

About the weather here:
I was pretty nervous about the seemingly frigid weather I was going to encounter when I decided to come here in January, but I got lucky! Many people have said that we had a very mild winter, and even when the temperature on the internet showed that it should be -20 F outside, I would usually break a sweat when taking a walk around the city! Of course I came well prepared with many wool socks, shirts, sweaters, and pants, but I tend to wear one layer of thick wool leggings and they keep me comfortably warm when walking outside! We think it isn't as cold as the temperature reads because it's very sunny almost every day here which helps to warm your body up and the elevation is at 4,300 ft (so the sun is even more powerful) (Minneapolis is at about 900 ft). Its also very dry here and we don't have the terrible wind chill that MN experiences. One thing I do miss about winter in MN is the major snow days! It barely snows here, and if it does, it snows just enough to dust the ground and when people walk and drive over it, it compacts it into ice making for a slippery walking experience!

Back at home, we decided that our blanket was in need of a good wash. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately because of how fun this was!) the blanket is much too large for our tiny wash machine! Matt, with his zest for adventure and his proactive nature, jumped right in to the bathtub to become his own wash machine to "get er done". He's even wearing the embroidered cat sweater I made for him, what a dream boat!!!

In more recent news, Matt is working on memorizing two VERY different types of Mongolian songs! One is an easier to sing Mongolian song:

The other is a pretty risque, but very catchy, club dance hit:

He is focusing on his tenor vocals right now! :) Which do you like better?!
Hopefully Matt will have these down the next time we go to karaoke!

Exploring Ulaanbaatar!

Hello Friends and Family!

February has brought a lot of excitement into our lives! First of all, we celebrated 6 years of dating! We went to eat at a fancy restaurant and had some good discussions. Here is evidence of us celebrating with our good friend, whom Matt named Nergui. Names in Mongolia usually mean something (examples: ). Matt's Mongolian tutor asked him if this stuffed doll (a present from Becky and Darren?), which she called a "drunken snowman," had a name. It didn't have a name so he decided to name it Nergui, which means "no name" and is a common name in Mongolia. Apparently there is some kind of superstition here that it is bad luck to give your child the wrong name (or something like this) so some people just never get a real name.

 

These were taken in our living room. Notice the attractive and detailed floral wallpaper (lilies)! It's very textured as well.

 

Last weekend, we decided to explore Ulaanbaatar a little bit and go hiking in the mountains surrounding the city. We were going to hike with a few other expats, but everyone else had some unfortunate event that prevented them from coming (missing hiking boots, being sick, or staying up way too late the night before.) It is very important to be in tip top shape if you want to hike in the mountains in the winter! We took a bus (only cost 400 tugrug / 0.30 USD) to the northern part of the city into the ger districts. We accidentally got off a few stops too early, but we enjoyed taking time to walk through and experience the sites and sounds of the ger districts.

A group of kids sliding on a flat piece of metal: 

All the families put up fences to separate their land from the next family. Matt and I were talking about how good Mongolians have it (relative to poor people in many other countries); because there is so much space and such a sparse population, and they have pretty comfy gers, it seems to us that they get to enjoy a life relatively more comfortable than a slum of a crowded city would be. Of course the cold and pollution counteract this a bit.

It ended up being a very hazy day. Usually it is very clean and sunny during the daytime here. I think this might have been a mix of cloudy and pollution?

 Evidence that we were really here!

I commonly see dogs scavenging through the piles of the trash in the city, but I was surprised to see goats eating garbage in the city, but really it was more in the outer city limits. I shouldn't have been surprised because 1) goats are known to eat pretty much anything and 2) this is probably the easiest food available. There really isn't much grass to graze on in this area. There was a dog-goat faceoff as we approached this garbage pile (you can see one of the dogs retreating on the left):

Lots of grub to choose from!

 

Lot for sale! Should Matt buy it??

Walking up the slope to the forest.

A lot of the gers are built on a hill!

Beware of wolf?

Hobbit hole!

 

We made it to the forest!

 

 Ok, this is definitely not smog! What a beautiful sight!

mustache scarf!

We found an abandoned ger made of concrete! Maybe we will live here this summer!

 

Looks like it might be a hang out spot for drunks!

Going back down to the ger district. You can see the grey smog! Every house here has a totally different design, with different sizes shapes and materials. A lot of them are very unusually proportioned and have strange features.

We got pretty cold, tired, and hungry after our long hike, so we enjoyed an enormous pizza twice the size of Matt at Pizza Big!

An adventurous day!

Food! хүнс

Hello All!

Rochelle here. I thought I would give you a little bit of an idea of what food is like here. The traditional Mongolian food available everywhere, but Ulaanbaatar has a huge selection of various types of other cuisine!

The extremely cold climate affects the traditional Mongolian diet, so the main cuisine consists of dairy, meat, and animal fat. Root vegetables and cold hardy crops (carrot, daikon radish, potato, onion, cabbage, and beet) are widely available in grocery stores, and they are quite tasty! The root veggies come with a healthy coating of dirt! It's strange to see dirty veggies in the grocery store, but it's no problem to wash it off at home. The traditional type of food is grown locally and free range! No factory farms needed here, there is plenty of space for animals to roam!!  Mongolian nomads sustain their lives from their herding animals such as horses, cattle, sheep and goats. Meat is often cooked over the stove or made into dumplings. The most common rural dish is cooked mutton, often without any other ingredients. "Buuz" is another common dish; it is dumplings filled with mutton, then steamed. Other dumplings may be boiled in water (bansh) or deep fried in mutton fat (khuushuur). I had quite a bit of mutton (sheep) dumplings during our visit in Darkhan, and I have to admit I was a bit muttoned out! Usually the mutton is a bit chewy and gamey, but it can be cooked in different ways to make it taste better as with any meat.
On very special occasions, meat and veggies are cooked by stones (that have been preheated in a fire) inside a can or abdominal cavity of a goat or marmot!!This is called horhog. Matt ate a meal prepared in this manner a few months ago and he got sick all night, but no one else did. According to Matt, the "traditional" way to cook marmot out in the countryside is to cut it's head off, stuff the body with rocks, tie the head hole together, burn the fur off with a blowtorch, and cook it over a fire. It expands like a balloon. It's really a sickening spectacle. Matt ate this once and thought it was disgusting, even though he likes most of the food here.
The most common traditional drink (aside from Chingis Vodka) is called airag, which is fermented mare's milk. Matt has experienced this as well and said it was like very strong and sour plain liquid yogurt. He said he liked it, but couldn't drink a lot of it; the Mongolians, on the other hand, drink it like a monkey eats bananas.
An everyday beverage is salted milk tea. This is what they offered us when we visited the gers near Darkhan. The salt varies by whoever makes the drink, but all the ones I had were too salty for me. I prefer sweet drinks over all others besides water.
We were also offered a biscuit/cookie called boorsog. It was pretty hard and bland, so it was best dipped into the milk tea to add a salty taste and soften it up. I thought that was very tasty!

As for the city grocery stores, the majority of the food is imported, and therefore pretty much the same price OR MORE as products in the USA! Stuff comes from Japan, South Korea, Russia and Germany, among other places. I've been eating and liking Korean food a lot; we found some really good spicy Korean sauces that we add to rice, tofu, and stir-fry vegetables. We've been making a lot of sauces with paprika and a liquid yogurt (similar to kefir) to add to stir-fry and rice. I've been trying to use grains other than rice to diversify our meals a bit. I found that "triangle rice" was common in the grocery stores but didn't know what it was called because the package was only in Mongolian. I had no idea what is was, but a little google search of grain pictures and I found out it was called kasha or toasted buckwheat. I guess it is often used for breakfast cereal, but there are some great dinner recipes as well. Millet is also common here, and although I've used in the USA before, it was only to add to bread. So I've been broadening my use of it here to use in the meals.

Here are some pictures of imported packaged products:

Matt's favorite treat! It has soft breading with marshmallow in the middle and is covered in chocolate. This is the best brand, the other brands are really terrible, according to Matt. It's from Korea and Orion is pronounced with an emphasis on the second "o". He is a Choco-Pie connoisseur!

 

 These cookies were awesome! They had chocolate drizzled over them and big peanut chunks. These crackers were also very tasty, they are covered in crushed pumpkin seeds. Both of these foods were pretty expensive, so I am going to try to do some homemade versions. It might be hard because we don't have an oven, but it is worth a try on the stove top! I already made chocolate chip cookies on the stove top and they turned out to be quite tasty, but looked a little bit like pancakes because I had to flip them on both sides! Looks aren't everything!

This is a tasty and sweet sunflower seed bar. Just a little piece is very satisfactory! It's written in Russian and says "peanut brittle"

I haven't even tried this yet because Matt said it wasn't very good. Way too sweet!  I'll try it someday...

These weren't very good on their own, but we ended putting them on some stove-top pizza we made (the pizza turned out really well, by the way) and they turned out really good when heated a little bit.

Look some stuff that is American!

Spices! I really need to learn how to read food labels, but the pictures on the packages help a lot. It seems as though I am going to have to learn Russian to understand a lot of what the food packages say. A lot of the food that looks like Mongolian writing to me, Matt says is Russian! They have pretty much the same letters ( Mongolian 2 more), but the letter combinations are very different.

Sometimes there is a mix of languages! I like that! This is Korean writing.

Famous German brand: Gut and Gunstig,  meaning Good and Favorable

We have to treat this like gold! Peanut butter is, unfortunately, very expensive here. This 18oz container was about $7!!  :(

I'll post up some recipes sometime. Bye, Bayartai, баяртай!