Adapting to the cold and skiing for the first time

Mongolia is cold.

I realise that statement is an obvious one but I thought I would throw it out there anyway.

The temperature in Mongolia dropped below zero 2 weeks back and is going to stay that way for the next 4 months. I have come to terms with this fact and I no longer get annoyed at the length of time it takes to get ready to go outside. As anyone who has ever lived in a country where warmth is something to dream about for most of the year will tell you, the key to not freezing to death is layers. I realised very quickly that layering up is an exact science. Wear too many layers and you will overheat fairly rapidly, too few and you'll be trying to remember what it felt like to have feeling in your extremities. The extreme cold creates problems for everyone in one way or another. The main issue for people living in Ulaanbaatar is pollution. UB is surrounded on 3 sides by ger (the traditional Mongolian dwelling) districts where poverty is endemic. The only way to heat a ger is to burn whatever you can get your hands on. Coal is the most common fuel but people will burn almost anything to keep warm. The majority of UB's population live in these districts so you can imagine the conditions created by hundreds of thousands of people burning fuel. UB itself lies in a valley so the smoke has nowhere to go. It hangs above the city like a great brown stain on the sky and on most days you cannot see the hills which surround the UB. It is little wonder that Mongolians have such a high level of respiratory diseases.

I believe I am adapting to the cold fairly well. I have learnt to ensure my hair is completely dry before going anywhere and I know to cover my face, both in an attempt to block out the pollution and to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of the inside of ones nostrils freezing. I have become adept and traversing the seemingly permanent patch of ice which lies conveniently in front of the door to my apartment building. In the past I would have been slipping and flailing my way across it (it's pretty wide), earning the laughs of the old ladies who sit on the bench nearby every morning, apparently unconcerned by the cold. Now I practically glide across and the old ladies nod sagely like Mr. Miyagi approving of the Karate Kid. I even know precisely where the slippiest parts of my route to work are. Speaking of my route to work, there is a western man I pass unfailingly every morning who I have decided is my nemesis. He is always wearing a baseball cap, which is a ludicrous choice of headgear for a winter in Mongolia. I believe he does it to make me feel less tough for wearing a warm hat. He doesn't wear gloves either. Who the hell does he think he is huh? Of course, I may be overreacting but that doesn't stop me from muttering "douche bag" every time I pass him.

Last week saw an event of such monumental significance that words can barely describe it. Okay, I'm exaggerating but it was pretty awesome. On Thursday (Nov 26th) Mongolia's first skiing resort opened to the public. Thursday also happened to be Mongolian Independence Day so we I had the day off. I was also paid the day before. It could not have been more perfect. So when Thursday morning reared it's pollution stained head I threw on the clothes I felt were most suited to skiing and went to meet the other volunteers who had decided to take advantage of this most excellent day.

The Sky Resort (for that is what it is called) had put on a free bus to take people the 13km out of town. Once I had sat down on this bus it suddenly dawned on me that I had never skied before and that Mongolia (where safety is something to implemented sometime in the future) may not be the best place to start. Unfortunately it was too late to back out so I discarded the nagging doubts which were swimming around my brain and trusted to fate.

When the bus pulled up to the resort I was pleasantly surprised. I had envisioned a place where the slopes would be strewn with body mangling objects and bears would pick off unaware skiers like salmon in a river. This proved not to be the case. The resort looked really good. There were 5 slopes: 2 green, 2 blue, and a black. However, only the greens and 1 blue were open that day. It is not a big place by anyone's standards but it was good enough. The place was very busy, although I think most people were taking advantage of the 30% discount! As a result, our first hour there was spent in various different queues. Once I had managed to grab the equipment it was time to gear up and embarrass myself in front of hundreds of people. Outside, I clipped myself into the ski's and was given a quick lesson in basic movement by Kiwi Steve. Armed with my new found knowledge, I slipped and slid my way over to the learning slope. It being a learning slope, there wasn't actually much of a slope, but I was thankful for this as I stood at the start of it. After a moments contemplation I made the plow shape with the ski's and pushed myself off. Once I realised I hadn't immediately decked it I began to enjoy myself. That is until a 5 year old girl went speeding past me.

Having courageously conquered the learning slope a couple of times I felt ready to step it up a gear and move onto a green run. This was predominantly because I had just seen Stephanie (who was skiing for first time as well) jump on to the ski lift and head up. My manly pride was wounded so naturally I had to follow. Having never used a ski lift before, I was quite unprepared for the speed with which the chair comes up behind you and was not very gracefully scooped up. I enjoyed the ride up to the start because I was able to laugh at all the people wiping out in different, hilarious, ways. I tried not to think about the fact that I too would probably be grinding my face through the snow in a few minutes.

When we reached the top of the run I immediately began to regret my decision to go up there. The slope we had chosen to go down starts with a steep bend and then straightens out until the finish and it looked much, much, steeper from the top. Still, fortune favours the foolish (at least I think that's how the saying goes) and with Steve's encouragements in my ear I let gravity have it's wicked way with me. Just like on the learning slopes, I made a plough shape and away I went. I started out pretty well but there was just one small problem. I hadn't learn how to turn, and it turns out that that is a pretty integral part of controlling one's speed. This quickly became apparent as my speed began to increase dramatically and my ski's began to straighten out. Before I knew what had happened I was hurtling down the slope. I probably would have been screaming if I wasn't so shocked. The whole way down I was thinking "don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, please get out of the way kid, don't fall, thank God the kid got out of the way, don't fall, don't fall, how the hell do I stop? Thankfully, I eventually ran out of momentum and came to an extremely relieved stop.

I spent the rest of the day on the green slopes and I did pretty well. I didn't fall over once, although I did slam into the back of a very large snow sculpture as my momentum failed to run out. Happily the sculpture was unharmed, my dignity was not.

I hope you enjoyed reading

A series of parties and frozen hair

It appears that my attitude to this blog has been a bit lackadaisical of late. It's been over a month since my last post (I know, you have been lost without it) and a lot has happened in that time. Too much to write about in one post in fact.

Work is going great and I have built up quite a rapport with my desk. It allows me to put things on it and I try not to draw on it. But seriously, Sometimes work can be difficult. This is mostly because there is nobody telling me what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. That might not sound like something that would make a job hard but like it or not, this is what most people who grow up in the West are used to. As a result, I have found myself in an environment where this doesn't happen. Some days can be a battle to make myself do something, others can be a battle to conquer the mountain of work I have created for myself. I prefer the latter. Happily, the days when it's a struggle to find something to do are few and far between.

Before I came to Mongolia one of my biggest concerns was that I wouldn't have much of a social life. I had a visions of myself hanging around my apartment with too much time to think. So it is with no small amount of relief that I find that my social life is, if anything, overactive. My budget is strained to breaking point due to my inability to say no. Actually, it's more likely to be because whenever someone mentions the word 'party' I get an uncontrollable urge to buy enough alcohol to drown a Rhino. I am slowly learning that my current lifestyle is unsustainable. A fact which was painfully demonstrated when I went to a market and realised that I only had enough money to buy a small bag of lentils...and I hate lentils.

Despite my current fiscal woes, I don't regret spending my money the way I did. The parties were pretty awesome. A couple immediately spring to mind. There was one a couple of weeks ago which was remarkable partly because I didn't know, or in fact, meet the host at any point, but also because I accidentally-on-purpose consumed a whole bottle of vodka. Though my memory is hazy, I do remember spending the entire night with said bottle of vodka holstered like a gun in my pocket. I also remember that there was a power cut so most of the partying was done in darkness. This meant that most of the conversations I had were dominated by comments such as "ow", "you're standing on my foot", and "that's not a bottle of beer your holding, it's sunflower oil". The following days' hangover was fairly spectacular as well. I woke up in the morning fully clothed and spead-eagled on my bed with an empty bottle of vodka in my jeans. When I stumbled into the kitchen it also became apparent that I had attempted to cook something when I got home. By the looks of it, I had tried to invent a new dish involving flour, bread, and another ingredient which I couldn't quite indentify. Needless to say, it didn't go well.

There was also a halloween party which would have been better had I not been wearing the worst halloween costume in Mongolia. In my defense I didn't choose it, I foolishly let a Scottish guy arrange it for me. My 'costume' consisted of a long, dirty, yellow raincoat. That's it. No one could quite decide whether I was dressed as a pervert, a serial killer or a fisherman. In the end I settled on a combination of the three. So I became (hopefully) the worlds first 'serialfishervert' (see below)



Still, I had a good time so no harm, no foul. There has been a bunch of other gatherings and shindigs but they can be summed up in the words 'I got drunk, had a good time, regretted it the next day'.

In other news, any warmth that was left in Mongolia has up-sticks and headed south. The temperature has dropped firmly below zero and won't be hitting the positives for another 4 months. As I write, the temperature is -12° C which, whilst cold, is nothing compared to what's forecast for the weekend. According to weather underground (http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/44292.html), the temperature on Sunday will be a beer freezing -37° C. That's right folks, you read correctly. I am amazed that Mongolians don't just hibernate during winter.

When a country is this cold it affects everything. True, there are some days when you can get away with a fleece and hat, but mostly you have layer-up. Leaving the apartment takes a good 5 minutes as one has to pile on the clothes so that you don't lose an arm to frostbite. If it has snowed then walking anywhere requires all you attention in order to avoid slipping and sliding into on-coming traffic or a large, possible angry, Mongolian guy. I am seriously considering investing in a pair of ice skates! The other problem which I learnt about the hard way is that of things freezing. This may seem obvious, but when you have spent 23 years living in countries where your hair dry's if it is wet when you go outside, I was quite unprepared. For those of you who have never had frozen hair, I can tell you that it is quite disconcerting. I didn't even notice the first time (yep, it's happened more than once) until I tried to run my hands through my hair and was met with more resistance than usual. The dampest sections of my hair had literally frozen. I never expected to have to thaw out my hair when I came to this country.

That's all I've got time for now. I'll try to be more dilligent with my blog in future.

Thanks for reading. -37° C. That's right folks, you read correctly. I am amazed that Mongolians don't just hibernate during winter.

When a country is this cold it affects everything. True, there are some days when you can get away with a fleece and hat, but mostly you have layer-up. Leaving the apartment takes a good 5 minutes as one has to pile on the clothes so that you don't lose an arm to frostbite. If it has snowed then walking anywhere requires all you attention in order to avoid slipping and sliding into on-coming traffic or a large, possible angry, Mongolian guy. I am seriously considering investing in a pair of ice skates! The other problem which I learnt about the hard way is that of things freezing. This may seem obvious, but when you have spent 23 years living in countries where your hair dry's if it is wet when you go outside, I was quite unprepared. For those of you who have never had frozen hair, I can tell you that it is quite disconcerting. I didn't even notice the first time (yep, it's happened more than once) until I tried to run my hands through my hair and was met with more resistance than usual. The dampest sections of my hair had literally frozen. I never expected to have to thaw out my hair when I came to this country.

That's all I've got time for now. I'll try to be more dilligent with my blog in future.

Thanks for reading.