we havent had internet or power all week, sorry

Fun fact: my job here in Mongolia isn’t just teaching English. Technically there is a community development aspect to my job which I really don’t know what I’m going to do with. We’re supposed to base it off of our interests, but I really don’t have any interests or hobbies. We were given “tools” to help assess our future communities so hopefully those will help stave off future failure.

But anywho, part of training includes a small community development project that we had to complete by the end of training. We all started out completely confused until we got to the “you have one week to have half of it completed and tell us how it went” point and we got ourselves together real real fast. Out of sheer laziness, we grouped together in our micro teaching groups. Of course, those were also decided by sheer laziness – we were sitting next to each in class when our trainer asked who we’d be working with. We decided to work with Jordan’s host family as our project by providing manual labor as well as teaching his family how to make pizza. We chose them because his host parents are elderly and could use the help, and we wanted to share some of our culture with them through food.

Saturday it all finally went down. Mostly because we were out of time and it was the only opportunity we had. Jordan’s host father and brother have been gone for the past month or so taking pictures of various Naadams because they are still going on. Plus we are constantly inundated with torrential downpours which make everything in life more difficult. Sound melodramatic? Maybe, but you try walking around in it while you’re supposed to look professional. It’s rough.

So our project was initially postponed because it rained again that morning. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to do it, but luckily the weather cleared up and we were able to start. The guys provided the manual labor and I was de facto chosen to help cook. Scary thought, right? Luckily Jordan knows how to make bread so my only real contribution was chopping the vegetables, stirring the sauce, putting the pizzas in the oven, and taking them back out again. I think I did a very good job because many people went back for seconds.

Our pizza making operation

Pizza isn’t quite the same with American cheese, but we make do with what we can find

One of the final products – I can’t tell you how amazing it smelled

The manual labor that I watched go down consisted of putting cement onto an outside wall. It was really interesting to see how it’s done because every house I’ve seen so far looks to be built this same way. The walls are originally wood but then they nail more wood on in a lattice pattern (that’s right, right?). Then they mix water, concrete mix, and sand/dirt together and fling it into the lattice. Once that initial layer is on, more concrete gets put on in outer layers to smooth it out and give more insulation. Or something like that.  The Americans weren’t trusted to throw on the concrete, so they had the glamorous jobs of fetching water, mixing the concrete, and bringing the concrete to where it was needed. May not have been glamorous, but it was needed and I think they did a lovely job. As I observed from either the pile of sand or inside safely away from flying concrete.

Andrew helping to mix the concrete

I’m sorry this is getting so long. Just one last thing to throw in. Okay, two: first, we had pizza and beer for lunch that day. I’m not beer’s biggest fan, but it was so American that it was AMAZING. Second, Jordan’s super friendly cat had kittens one week ago. While we were waiting for the rain to clear up, I was cooing at week old kittens that still haven’t opened their eyes. I can feel your jealousy from here, don’t worry.

SO FURRY I COULD DIE