Tasty Cheeseburger Recipe, Real Mongolian 'Barbecue' and the Joys of Being Thrown in a River

On Friday morning, one of my coworkers came to my apartment and told me we'd be going out to the countryside children's camp for a couple days, leaving that afternoon. I ran a few errands, packed my things (including books, frisbee, etc.) in anticipation of spending a weekend with a bunch of kids, teaching, playing games, etc. After a two hour drive southwest we arrived at the camp. When we got out and started walking around I saw a few people here and there but quickly realized there were no children around. I talked to my coworkers and they informed me that we had come out to the camp to spend a 'holiday' or vacation weekend and we'd be sleeping in tents by the river and pretty much relaxing. I was pretty surprised but happy nonetheless. The weekend was filled with milk tea, water fights by the river between me and my coworker's seven year old son, a little dancing at the makeshift disco, a lot of reading, listening to music and relaxing in the sun, and a short hike up a small hill/mountain. On Saturday we had real 'Mongolian bbq' which is nothing like what you'd expect. Basically they take meat, season it with wine and some other spices, add potatoes, carrots, cabbage, etc. then heat up rocks in the middle of a fire, and put the rocks in with the meat, cover it and let it cook. It was really good and although I've been here for over a year, the first time I'd tried it. On Sunday in the afternoon before we left my coworkers decided that since I hadn't been in the river yet, they were going to put me in the river. I was picked up by five or six people and dragged over to the river and thrown in. I managed to pull two of them in with me but unfortunately I lost my glasses and was blind for most of the rest of the day. I have an extra pair but I'm hoping I can get the other one replaced in Ulaanbaatar next week when I'm in for a mid service training session with the other volunteers from my group.

Not much going on in Olgii outside of my weekend adventure. I'm going into the office this week to meet with my coworkers and practice my Kazakh. Another thing that came up that I'm interested in getting started soon is the idea of a website for Olgii. My friend Jason, who was a PCV in Hovd, helped to develop a website for that city which has a lot of good information for travelers. I'd like to do something similar and talk to some of the local hotels, businesses, tourist orgs, etc. about putting their information on the website. A decent amount of travelers and tourists make it out to Olgii in the summer and fall so it would probably be a helpful resource and would make navigating around Olgii and Bayan Olgii a bit easier, plus it could possibly get a bit more exposure for Olgii and educate the curious on what the Kazakh culture in Mongolia is all about. This isn't really related to my primary work assignment but I will probably start working on it with my friend Nurbol soon in my free time. I'm also hoping to meet with a local school before classes start to talk about helping out with some of their lessons and possibly organizing some life skills and English language clubs.

Here's a few pictures from the weekend in the countryside. I will get more of them uploaded to my Flickr account as soon as I can and then post up a slide show.