"the best time"

Today we went to an art museum where we saw many paintings with the same title: "The Best Time." They were these huge landscape paintings of the Mongolian Steppes (looked up the spelling) in the summertime and autumn. Bright swaths of colors- blue sky, bright green plains, colorful horses, white round gers with brightly painted doors, children in purple or blue or pink traditional clothes playing with colts or riding camels.... it sure does look like a good time to me.

Unfortunately, it seems we are in Mongolia at the opposite time of those described in this painting. Its almost like we've caught the country when it is indecent... the blankets of snow have receded but the new blankets of summer grass and trees have not yet covered its white and brown bones. So since we returned from the countryside, it has been a pretty urban experience.

Eric has been teaching his course- yesterday was the last of 3 days. In between teaching, we have met with a number of people from the Mongolian Ministry of Health, including the mastermind behind their new strategic plan for public health improvement. He was a brilliant and kind man, and the conversation was fascinating and also confirmed some of the ideas we have both begun to have about international (and local, for that matter) public health improvement. You need broad-based buy-in... the people who are most effected by the new programs have to feel like they *own* the new programs- like they reflect their ideas and respond to what *they* have identified as their own needs. You all know this. HE also gave us some nice teaching advice: The role of the teacher is not to bring the student to the edge of the teacher's knowledge: it is to bring the student to the edge of their own knowledge. We like it. Eric is trying to drum up some collaborations with these guys, so who knows, maybe one day we'll be back. Hopefully we'll time it so that we come at "The Best Time".

In case some of you have paused over the past week and thought "I wonder what Betsy and Eric are doing right now", I thought I'd let you know that we were probably walking, trying to find a new restaurant or cafe, as listed in lonely planet. For the first three days we could not find any of the restaurants listed in LP, so we kept returning to what we called Restaurant A, B or C. Restaurants' A and C are actually the same chain of dutch or german pastries, so they really just count for one. We like the pastries. But we were getting a little tired of them, and began to notice that it seemed we were the only ones eating the pastries (by count of the remaining danishes on the plate). Happily yesterday we tried some new seeking strategies and discovered the restuarants of Lonely Planet fame, and were well rewarded. We took our host, Oyun, to dinner at her favorite restaurant, Brauhaus. Yep, its a big german stakehouse. She doesn't like to go out for Mongolian food because she and her mom cook it better than the restaurants (true- we can attest). And my lamb was tastey. I don't need to have any more beef tongue, though, which was the appetizer.

You may have noticed that I write about food a lot. I guess thats one of the things that is most different. THankfully Mongolia has a lot more chocolate available than China. I was in danger there for a little while, until we found Nusica (aka Nutella, or chocolate hazelnut spread...).

The language here is really different too- it is kind of hushed and full of a lot of "th" and "sh" sounds and just aspirated vowels. Its a nice change from Chinese, who, as one fellow travel said "are anything but quiet". And its refreshing to see many Mongolians wearing the same outfits they probably have been wearing for centuries- these long beautiful robes made of wool or silk, with a silk scarf tied around like a belt, or a big thick leather belt with a big silver buckle. And they wear these huge boots with turned up toes, that are often emboidered or have some carved decoration. You can understand why they dress this way when the sun goes behind a cloud....

Tomorrow we head to Beijing, and in two more days we fly back to Canada! As this trip wraps up, I thought I'd share something I wrote in my journal a few weeks ago, after we left our little group of fellow travelers in Lhasa:

I have been thinking lately about how much I love this kind of traveling-- and how this travel community is always out there--with all of its personality and learning about each other's cultures while at dinner in a completely different one. The three dinners we had in Tibet with Sara and Matt (the 2 canooks Eric knew from home) were an example of what we seek when we travel. We're seeking to learn about the world--what is so different than where we are from-- but then we're also seeking the things that are familiar: we're looking for similarities with other travelers... to learn about ourselves.

Mission accomplished.

Now I just need a long, deep dose of the wilderness of British Columbia. Oh and a few servings of Eric's folk's pear apple sauce.

Don't worry, there will be another posting or two- especially if we do a good hike in BC, and we have some photos to upload.

xo
betsy