Warm weather has finally come to Ulaanbaatar, but the spring dust storms are just beginning. First I must say that the eleven staff and instructors at SIT-Mongolia and the fourteen other students I’m studying with are all amazing. Such different people but we all get along and everyone has a new perspective to offer on all the things we’re doing and seeing.

My two weeks living with a nomadic Kazakh family in the Altai Mountains of Western Mongolia were phenomenal. Apart from being sick for a day, I was elated to be breathing in the most wonderfully clean air and truly revelling in my existence in the ‘Land of the Blue Sky’. Our diet was entirely meat and flour based, with occasional rice. Fried bread with milk tea four or five times a day (the command to drink tea is “chai eesh!” and I honestly heard this phrase AT LEAST 80 times a day, while only actually consuming about a dozen bowls of the stuff) and then a large dinner, usually horse or camel meat with dried noodles. Horse meat is good but smells strongly, and camel meat is tastier, though oily. (Since returning to UB, I’ve acquired a deep appreciation for the luxury that is having access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and taken full advantage of the variety of produce offered here).

My daily chores included milking the cows, collecting dung,vembroidering felt mats, shoveling snow for water and sawing firewood. I lived with seven people and my sixteen year old host aunt, Myragol, would go with me on hikes up into the mountains every afternoon. My family shared two houses and the solar panel powered a lightbulb in each house and a small television, on which we would watch Kazakh music videos every night. Most of the news and entertainment they get comes from Kazakhstan. My father owned three horses, ten cows and about a hundred sheep and goats.

Where we stayed in Bayan-Olgii there is still a lot of snow and the elevation was around 2,000m. To get there our group took a four hour flight to the western-most aimag capital, drove seven hours to the western-most town in the country and then drove another 60 km west to a valley 20 km from the border with China.

We met a Kazakh eagle hunter and joined our host families in celebrating Nauryz – the six day festival that welcomes spring. My family was one of five to host the daily parties – which mostly consisted of team games (usually involving blindfolds, but tug-of-war was a favorite), LOTS of eating, and even more singing, toasting and playing of the dombraa (the traditional Kazakh two-string ‘guitar’).

It was so wonderful to see the close relationships between the families and how important it is for them to have fun and light-hearted interactions from time to time to break up the general monotony of the herding lifestyle. On the day of the equinox there was a huge wrestling competition and a 5km horse race through our valley. My host uncle rode ‘my’ horse and got eleventh place out of more than thirty horses that finished, and he was so incredibly proud. For lunch that day I was given a sheep’s eye and attachments to eat and fought my gag reflex every bite of the way, though it didn’t actually taste bad. Maybe I should have tried downing it all at once?

Every morning I got to ride ‘my’ horse to language class and on days when the wind wasn’t too harsh, my host father and I would race the last 2 km home. I really struggled juggling Mongolian language classes and learning Kazakh with my host family. My first few days back in the
city I only spoke in Kazakh when I was out and about.

Back in UB I went hiking with a few people on Sunday and we found a puppy on the frozen river almost two miles outside of town. We carried it with us up into the mountains, and then brought it back to our student hostel to take care of it and named it Taloo. Taloo got a little loud, and as we’re not supposed to have animals inside we’ve had to construct a makeshift shelter for him outside. Hiking around here never fails to lead us into adventures.