why oh why?

A few weeks before I left for this trip, a woman in my choir asked for how long I was staying in Mongolia. Eleven months, I replied. She nearly choked and had to steady herself on a pew, "I thought you were going on HOLIDAY". It was by far the best reaction I'd had to this trip so far (hi Mary if you're reading this!). Of course then she asked "WHY?!"

Well, I didn't necessarily choose to come to Mongolia specifically, but it happens to be the location of my AYAD assignment:

My profile from the AYAD website. Yes. I unashamedly love Bear Grylls.

I'll be at the Lotus Children's Centre which is an orphanage that was set up by an Australian woman back in the mid 90s. They have a new facebook page with loads of gorgeous photos.  This year the Mongol Rally have chosen Lotus to be one of the official charities it will sponsor. So who's in? You can come and stay with me after you cross the finish line! I'll take you out afterwards for the best buutz in town!

The process of actually getting here was pretty drawn out. I think the assignments for this intake (#32) went up in May and I didn't hear back until August..."mobilisation" was just last Saturday which feels like ages ago. It's been a long week!

This week the seven of us have been put up at Michelle Hotel (I have just discovered the link function...can you tell?) which looks pretty fancy in the photos, but it's seen better days. However it does have free wifi! And is conveniently located to a Chinese restaurant which has the most amazing menu selection I have ever seen:

"Add onion explodes the shrimp"

"Double bag beef balls" - most definitely my favourite.

"The delicacy elbow flower"

"Old vinegar head"

"The old woman inebriates the fish"

"The northeast pulls the skin greatly"

Yep. Pretty amazing. Perhaps if my mum is reading this she can send through the actual translations.


Before getting here I did a fair bit of research into the cuisine here. It didn't really get me excited. And I'm usually pretty excited to try most anything (I did eat, and have photographic proof of my eating of rooster testicles in Budapest...really not as bad as it sounds).

Tasty, tasty balls.

At PDT (post departure training...AYAD loves acronyms), Zoloo (a young Mongolian national studying at ANU) said that, and I quote, "Mongolian's are pretty lazy" when it comes to food. For instance, one of the traditional dishes is horhog. Note the number of "optional" ingredients. And when they say sheep. They mean mutton. I've had my first taste. It's pretty pungent, but not unbearable.  The other traditional dishes are buutz - mutton dumplings.  I say dishes because you can have steamed buutz or fried buutz. That counts as two right?  Buutz were described to me as 'like Chinese dumplngs, but without all the flavour'. Yum. On our first night we were taken out to Nomad's which is a chain of Mongolian restaurants (or Pectopah as they're so affectionately known now). I chose from the picture menu what I had imagined to be a beef and veggie stir fry. It's known as Tsuvan here. It was definitely a sort of stir fry...but yeah. Don't get your hopes up about the traditional cuisine here. Mostly it's pretty "pure" (...bland) and there's not a lot of vegetable matter but quite a lot of fat in everything. Big gooey chunks of it.  Mongolian people believe the fat is the best part of the meat and to leave it on the plate, as I did, is considered pretty weird! But considering that on average, the temperature is below 0 celcius 8 months of the year (hence the name of this blog), they need all they can get to help them survive.


BUT! Since getting here we've eaten out every lunch and dinner and I am yet to be disappointed! I've had NORTH Korean, vegan and vegetarian, Indian that would put some of Melbourne's countless curry joints to shame, and spectacular pizza from DoDo. I've even eaten salad. Yep, that green stuff that I feared I'd miss the most. It's here. And it's pretty good! There's quite a large community of expats here and with them they've brought their delicious food! Unfortunately for me this means that the "Mongolian Diet" that I had imagined isn't exactly going to help me along in the weight loss stakes. I'm not even at risk of UB belly, as there really isn't such a thing as it's too bloody cold for any bugs to exist!


In between all of this week's eating, our group has had to find apartments to stay in for the rest of the year. It's pretty stressful. But after seeing 11 apartments in 2 days me and two other girls will be moving into a gorgeous soviet apartment affectionately known as grandma's flat. The video is pretty unique.


Tonight we went to the monthly open mic night at Xanadu art gallery. I wreak of cigarette smoke. It's really hard to get used to the indoor smoking now that we've been spoilt with the smoking ban in Oz.  But the beer was cheap (2500 Tugs, or about $2 for 500ml of Tiger) and company was fun. I even ate a kebab on the way home. It was just like a Friday night at home but at -2 degrees! Tomorrow (after a well deserved sleep in) we're off to Narantuul or the "Black markets". I've been told to brace myself. I really hope that this kebab doesn't go dodgy on me...


Ax