Pictures

All right so I am currently in the process of uploading many of my photos from the last seven months onto my photobucket account. My original plan was to create a huge slide show but due to limitations on photobucket and my own inability to figure out how to create a slide show through the blog options, I am failing.

I have created one short fifty picture slide show so far and I will just add it onto my post. These are pictures from my first month or so in Mongolia, some of which I have emailed and some of which are uploaded on Facebook. Hopefully in the next few days or weeks I can find some time to upload the rest of my pictures and find a good way to put them up on the blog.

Anyways, I just returned home to Olgii after my three week incursion in Ulaanbaatar and I must say, it's nice to be back. I don't have any work this week due to the New Year holiday but I will be working on lesson plans and figuring out the details of the physical education classes I am hoping to start teaching in the next few weeks. More to come soon.

R&R in Ulaanbaatar/ Winter has arrived

Well, the last few weeks have been spent in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. We had one week of Peace Corps training at a hotel just outside of the city where we worked on some exercises with our Mongolian counterparts and reviewed some classes and topics relevant to our jobs and service. The training was relevant and useful for the most part and hopefully some good things will come out of it in the future working with our host country agencies.

UB has been expensive but it's a nice break from normal life. I was able to get a massage, pick up a few books, spend some quality time with other PCV's who I haven't seen since August, do a little partying and dancing, and eat some delicious, not so healthy food. Pizza, cheeseburgers, roast beef sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, chicken strips, french fries, etc. make for some great vacation meals..lol. Tomorrow for Christmas I will be getting together with some other volunteers who are still in town and also Darren and Laura Roth, a couple from Denver who are PCV's living in UB. We are going to have sort of a Christmas get together/dinner, should be good times.

Winter has arrived in Mongolia it seems. We've been having well below freezing temperatures the past few weeks. This weather combined with the smog of UB has been a great recipe for PCV's getting sick and hacking their lungs out. I have been in some pretty cold weather back in the U.S. but I think I can honestly say this is the coldest weather I've ever experienced. When you go outside you really gotta bundle up, especially when it's windy or there's even a slight breeze. January and February are supposed to bring even colder temperatures so we'll see how that goes. Photo credit for this entry goes to Leslie and Nathan Chamberlain, I stole it...haha! It's outside the hotel we stayed at for training. A little snow then but that's been the most I've seen.

Anyways, I just started reading a book called 'The Places In Between' by a Scottish writer named Rory Stewart. He walked across Afghanistan in 2002 and the book is all about his experiences during that adventure. After I started reading it I looked up a bit more information on Stewart and I have to say he is one of the more impressive and accomplished individuals I have read about.
Here's a link to an interesting article on him from 'National Geographic Adventure magazine'
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/photography/afghanistan/rory-stewart.html

Mongolian Computer Viruses 1 Matt's Ipod 0

Before I came to Mongolia I received an 80 gb ipod for my birthday and filled it with over 15,000 songs from my computer, my dad's computer and a couple friends' computers. Needless to say, I was prepared in terms of music....and that ipod got me through all the stressful times during training. Whenever there was some ridiculous discussion or argument going on, headphones went in and music went on, problem solved. Also, thanks to fellow volunteer and good friend Travis Hellstrom, I had quite a few episodes of the show 'Lost' on my ipod, a show that I started watching when I got here.

Recently I let some of my students use my flash drive at work and it was the recipient of some nasty computer viruses, one of which almost crashed my laptop. Luckily through skype I was able to talk to mom and have her help me save the computer. Unfortunately my ipod did not survive, lol. Unless one of my friends in UB can do something to save it, I will probably have to reformat and lose all my music. I am hoping that I can get some music from my friends while in UB and at least start my music collection again. Mongolian computer viruses are epic and devastating so the lesson of the day: be careful when putting your flash drive in a computer in Mongolia.

The Matt Becker blog has arrived !!!! Prepare yourselves!!!!!

Ok so I finally got around to starting a blog. Most of the people who will be reading my blog initially are probably on my email list and have been receiving somewhat regular updates on my adventure as a Peace Corps volunteer in western Mongolia. That being said I will probably post up some information from the past six months so others can read about what's been going on. I am working on uploading a number of pictures onto my photobucket account so I can make a slideshow or two, some of the photos are in my facebook albums, some aren't. I'm going to do my best to keep this blog updated with pictures, videos, stories, thoughts, reflections, ramblings, and what not.

Despite my experience with facebook and myspace in the past, I am pretty new to the whole 'blogging' thing. It seems pretty cool so far and I am looking forward to learning more as I work on my blog. It might take me a little while to get up to speed so bear with me. I will be spending a few weeks in Ulaanbaatar so hopefully my friend and fellow PCV Travis can help me out. He already has a great blog up, it's linked on my page under 'Advance Humanity'. Take some time to check it out, Travis is a great writer and has a lot of interesting thoughts on a variety of topics. There are a few other PCV's from my group that have blogs as well so I will probably try to link a few of those soon.

Ok so here's the latest: It's now been six months since I first arrived in the beautiful country of Mongolia. I completed the two and a half months of preservice training and enjoyed my host family stay in Sukhbaatar, spent a few days in Darkhan for swearing in, spent a few days in Ulaanbaatar and then came to Olgii in the far western aimag of Bayan Olgii in mid August. Things have been up and down, exciting, interesting, dramatic, difficult, back and forth and stressful, but ultimately I am very happy to be here and very happy to have this opportunity.

Most of my work right now consists of teaching English to a few different groups of students but I have a few promising projects coming up in the next few months. My sitemate Laura and I are planning on continuing a trash cleanup and dumpster/trash can installation project that our M18 (volunteer from last year's group) started. We are also planning an afternoon physical education and sports class for kids of all ages. If things go as planned this will consist of helping to promote a healthy lifestyle for the youth of Olgii through activities like stretching, aerobics, kickboxing, and teaching various athletic games and sports. Another project I am really excited about is the possibility of working with the the local health department on some life skills courses for teens. I was fortunate enough to have the chance to meet with the lady in charge of training for the health department and she has worked with PCV's in the past. She was really excited to meet with me as well and hopefully we will get the life skills classes going not too long after I return from Ulaanbaatar.

Anyways, the weather has been really cold lately. I spent a chill holiday weekend in Hovd aimag, about four hours southeast of Olgii. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with the Hovd PC volunteers and a couple volunteers from other countries. Pictures coming soon from that adventure.

Well this is the start of my blog, I hope you enjoy it. So far I have a list of links I really enjoy for news, entertainment, and causes, a list of books I recommend, and a couple pictures. There's a lot more to come. Pictures, videos, and more detailed information on the past few months as well as the coming months.

Matt