As the headline says: Mongolians love to celebrate, everything!
I am fully arrived now in UB! Has taken quite a while…
Just my training routine is missing, but I will get this done by the end of the week, hopefully. Depends on different things. #healthcheck #contract #someonemothertonguecomingwithme Feeling like a couch potato now even I do my athletics training each morning in my room!
Some more curiosities to experience here:
#bumpingintosomeone
If you bump into someone on the street or anywhere else you give this person either the hand or touch the arm to apologize. I really like this to be a bit more attentive in live to your surrounding and your fellow human beings. Definitely a habit that other nations could adapt.
#Dryday
Every first day of the month is called “dry day”. Before this day most of the people get heavily drunk. Vincent was killing a bottle of vodka with his host dad. Crazy! This might be a tradition coming from soviet times?! I have to investigate this a bit more as up to now nobody could really tell me where this custom comes from! Unfortunately, alcohol is here a huge problem, as well as a fascistic movement is more or less growing. This is why the Goethe Institut (GI) wants to explain the theme by the help of a movie session in one of the big cinemas, They would like to show films such as “Sophie Scholl – The Final Days” / “Das kurze Leben der Sofie Scholl” or a film about a resistance group of WW2.
#dayoftheolfpeople
The 1st of October was not only Dry Day but also Day of the Old People. Jessy and me were at the Chinggis Khaan square to catch up and went by the event. Totally funny because very old people were dancing along to weird very old pop songs and animated us to join! Ok why not… So we had a nice little dance session with some crazy old guys and girls and they had fun because some European looking young girls danced along with them!
Here the more modern version (Originally from Ricchi e Poveri, published in 1983)
#teacherlife
I met Jessy and we corrected some work sheets having a coffee and German Butterkekse! Either we meet and do school stuff or we learn some Mongolian sentences 😉
#25 YEARS GERMAN UNITY
Friday the 2nd of October we were invited to the German Embassy here in UB to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Germany. Awesome, so we got dressed up and met there at 1pm. Ok Jessy and me were a bit late because we got lost somewhere…. After a little detour, I remembered a crossway and knew where we have to go. The garden of the German Embassy is a very nice place, pretty huge and even the house is a nice old looking white picturesque building, which definitely attracts attention between the shabby buildings or skyscraper. After our ambassador Gerhard Thiedemann had held his speech we were off to the gigantic German buffet – Yeah GERMAN FOOD!!!! There was everything from veggies, salads or suckling pig, fried mashed potatos (Kartoffelpuffer), red fruit jelly (Rote Grütze) to bakery stuff (Franzbrötchen and Berliner), Coffee, Wine (red, white, rosé), Bier etc…. Heaven on earth!!! As well nice to meet some interns who work in foundations such as the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. I talked to Florian, Jonas and Malte and some more, which was awesome. Jonas joined us straight at the trail run on Saturday and we even met to make a pasta party Friday evening. Normally the welcome was planned from 1pm to 3pm but we stayed there until 5pm ☺ We made some plans or better we thought about several things coming up: Celebration of Christmas together, maybe even three days at the shared flat of Jonas. This was just a guess but we all really liked the idea of hanging around for 3 days, do a secret Santa (German: wichteln) and eat a lot. Moreover, we talked with Nina Seiffert, the wife of Christian Seiffert (I already talked about them in my entry about the football match). She will contact us because of the Christmas Bazar and we gonna help there. Yeah! Lovely to get some new things to do and it is not quite far away from my home.
#PASTAPARTYANDHAPPYTRAILRUN
No sooner said than done. Pasta Party at Jonas and Florians shared flat! ☺ Yummy and indeed my first vegetarian dish here.
Saturday morning we took a help-taxi (the safe taxi company here), which we ordered via internet. It went everything well and so we started our trip at the State Department Store (SDS) at 7:45am…. The driver found the Ger Camp very easy because I have given them a detailed description within my request. As we arrived there some people were already there. I got into contact with some nice ladies from the organisation team, especially Joanne, who is very lovely. The atmosphere was great! Sebastian Woitsch, head of the GI in UB, joined us. It is autumn as you might remark of the photos. Orange trees, temperatures around the freezing point. We changed our closes, took a few photos, registered for the 7k Wolf Run and petted the camel, which went by. Maybe the pet of the Ger Camp. Be careful they spit 😀 Jessy and Jonas were brave and made some funny things next to the camel. I took the pictures 😀 A huge, relaxed-looking animal and I really love them <3
The Run was organised by the American School and there were a lot of volunteers. They took even care of our rucksacks – Awesome! Start was at around 9ish. We went 3.5k up the hill, and up the hill mean here definitely UP THE HILL! The last around 1.5k we even had to cross some icy parts, which made us slow. And the 3.5k had 500m of altitude :O We really had to be careful and I fell once on my way down – Outch! Not well prepared as most of the Mongolians had spikes on their shoes. Next time we know better! Very hard, exhausting and breathtaking but all Mongolian hikers cheered on us and this made us run faster. On the top we had to register, drank something, took a picture. Then we were ready to go down. By the way it took us about 45 minutes to go up but just 30 minutes to go down. At the very end Jessy and me had a final sprint, Jonas and Sebastian were cheering on us and yeah it felt soooooo good! We had a whale of a time there and enjoyed the good air, good company and the atmosphere of the event. Next step is to build up a trail running community (maybe #boostmongolia :D) here and Jessy and me, we want to join them every once in a while depending of course on the temperatures. Pumped with adrenaline and motivated Jonas, Jessy and me went home by foot. For me around 18 k in total (first to Jessy, collecting my stuff and then back home) and then more or less getting straight ready for the teacher day after Skyping.
A huge thank goes to the ASU (American School Ulaanbaatar), the organizers and of course to Jessy, Jonas and Sebastian, who made the event unforgettable!
#sundaystroll
We have amazing whether here right know! During the day it is around 18 degree Celsius! Awesome!
