Forecast: Cold and Windy

As summer progresses and June has been getting warmer and warmer, I've neglected to check the weather forecasts for Mongolia. Here's the latest from our correspondent in the field:

Last night was freezing and lots of us had a hard time. Today it was clear, though, and warmed up, so hope tonight will be better. Although the gers have wood stoves in the center, we still don’t have a stove pipe in our ger, so can’t get heat even if we want it.

Let's see, that was Saturday. The weather didn't improve much for Sunday:

The wind was ferocious in the field today, and now it is blowing again, bringing some rain. John and I may stay in during the morning to catch up on all the mapping.

They have had plenty of good days in the field and got to experience some up-close-and-personal:

On the way after lunch, we traveled through an area where a pastoral family lives where JS and I had previously avoided since we knew we would be asked questions and couldn’t respond. But the Mongolian in our group translated, and as per tradition, we were invited into their ger and asked to eat; it is considered more than rude to refuse such hospitality, and in fact when passing by, you are expected to drop in. So we all crowded into their ger and sat as they served up milk tea (goat & sheep mixed), then brought on a platter of biscuits, hard cheese, and a huge tub of “yogurt”. We all drank the milk tea, but only JS and I tried the “yogurt”; we still aren’t sure what it is but it is rather bitter, so they sprinkle sugar over it. I’m hoping that I don’t get sick from the unusual food and possibly unsanitary utensils, but it looked like they kept a reasonably clean ger. All of this is a show of wealth. Apparently the herders are doing better these days since the price of cashmere is high. We still see a lot of dead goats in the field, however. This family looked to have 200-300 goats plus sheep, so are considered well off. They actually have a small TV and solar panel. We couldn’t communicate much, but apparently this family was suitably amused by our outlandish attire and inability to speak a word of their tongue. They commented that they had been seeing JS and I in the field on previous days, so it was good that we introduced ourselves.

I'm expecting JR to come back and instruct us in how to say please, thank you and hello in Mongolian although he probably won't be able to write them out in Cyrillic. And I admit it, I'm totally jealous. I'd probably just settle in with them, eat yogurt and talk about lambie pies (and I'm betting they do have a stovepipe and a warm ger). Maybe I could talk them into a ride on those little Mongolian ponies too.

Meanwhile although he's so busy that some days he just says hi, he's apparently counting the days:

I have no idea what day it is since we are always working and Mongolian time differs from Pacific time. We figure we have hit the 10th day of work here, so that means we are half done, so guess we are about on schedule as we will need some days to finalize.

That's all for now. It's so nice to have an adventure on the other side of the world and still be able to "talk" daily.