Adventures in InterAimag Travel

So this past weekend, Laura, Rike and I decided to go to Hovd to spend some time with the new PCV's placed there and our friend Kat who's been there for the past year. Much like we have for past weekend excursions, we went to the market in the afternoon to catch a jeep to Hovd in the afternoon. Earlier in the day Rike had met with a driver she was familiar with to let him know three people would be coming to him for a ride. As always, we got there at the time the driver wanted us to, about 3:00, and then spent about an hour waiting around, doing nothing, while the driver chatted with his friends and did pretty much nothing. Eventually the driver left the driver's lot near the market and we were (we thought) on our way. We made it about a half a mile before the driver stopped and got out and started talking with some people in another car. We sat around for a bit and then a porgon (Russian van) full of locals pulled up. Our original driver told us we would be going with the van to Hovd, to which we said 'no thanks' because there were already about fifteen people in the van. Eventually after a lot of haggling and negotiating, we convinced (or so we thought) the original driver to take us to Hovd. The driver left and headed in the opposite direction, back towards the market, much to our dismay.

We arrived back in the driver's lot a few minutes later and the driver pawned us off on another jeep and its driver. After a few more minutes of doing nothing, we finally left. We ended up having three other people and still had to pay more than the normal price, supposedly because the price of fuel went up recently. The driver decided we needed to stop and visit his family for tea in a small soum (town) a little out of the way and a few hours later we finally arrived in Hovd a little after midnight. We stayed with another Laura, an M20 who is now working at the American Center, a sort of library learning center in Hovd. The weekend was pretty chill and relaxed for the most part. We partied a little bit, chatted with the new volunteers and enjoyed the surprisingly warm weather.

After a couple laid back days in Hovd, our adventures were not over yet. On Monday afternoon we went to the Hovd market to get a driver back to Olgii. We sat at the market from 3:00 to 6:00, moved back and forth between two vehicles, while the drivers kept telling us we were leaving 'now'. Eventually we left, only to stop five minutes later to pick up a bunch of random supplies from some building nearby. After another twenty minutes we got on the road, only to stop fifteen minutes later and watch as the driver and his friends got out of the van, walked down the street and drank vodka after telling us that another vehicle was coming to pick us up. After another half hour to fourty minutes we got back on the road without this 'other vehicle' showing up. We stopped what seemed like every two hours over the course of this trip, including an hour long stop for some food halfway between Hovd and Olgii. After a long, exhausting journey, we got into Olgii at about 4:00 am. What a great weekend journey.

In other news, I'm trying to get my classes started as soon as possible. I met with Ashlee, my M20 sitemate and her counterpart at the health department and discussed our project to get the HIV/AIDS life skills curriculum translated into the Kazakh language, met with my friend Nurbol to discuss Kazakh language lessons, my learning center project and the website for Olgii. Next week I'm going to be starting my work with a couple local schools on English clubs with different groups of students and this week I'll be passing out my fliers with info for my English lessons at work. I've got the ball rolling on the projects I want to be working on for the fall and I think in the next week or so I'll be alot busier during the week. I'm looking forward to getting as much done as I can over the next few months.