Saturday, June 5, 2010

Excitement

Lots of exciting stuff happening around here! Tonight the new group of Trainees arrives! We are all really looking forward to it; a bunch of us PCVs that are in UB will go out to the airport to greet them. Then I fly to America on Monday!! Very excited. This morning I ran a 5k in the first ever International Marathon in UB I believe they called it. A bunch of other PCVs ran the 5k too, and one PCV ran the half marathon and another ran the full! I have not yet heard from him how it was... hopefully he finished running! The reason I wanted to update my blog though was because last night was probably one of the best I have had in my time here in Mongolia thus far. The group Ozomatli from Los Angeles came and played a concert in UB, and they were AMAZING. I went to the concert with a bunch of PCV friends and we had a blast, dancing and singing along the whole time. Generally Mongolians are a bit more reserved about dancing (from what I've seen at least) so we were kinda that group of white people dancing like crazy haha. As the concert progressed though Mongolians around us were dancing too, and a bunch dancing right there with us. What was especially awesome was that Ozomatli had a Mongolian guy throat sing mixed into one of their songs, which the crowd just loved. They also spoke a little in Mongolian, a tough thing to do, but so worth the effort considering they wanted to connect with their crowd. At the end of the show us PCVs started yelling "encore" over and over, this didn't catch on too much, so we told the Mongolians around us it means again, then we all yelled again in Mongolian over and over again. Now I'm sure Ozomatli was planning on doing an encore anyway, but they came back out after we all started yelling in Mongolian, and this was really cool. When they came back on stage they all had traditional Mongolian hats on, making the crowd just errupt. After the show we talked with the guys from Ozomatli backstage and took some pictures (I didn't have my camera so I don't have them to post now, but maybe later if I can get the pics from my friend). They were amazing people to talk with. We were all so curious about them and asking them all kinds of questions, but the cool thing was that they were equally as interested in us and what we are doing here in Mongolia. Ozomatli was actually invited by the U.S. State Department to serve as Cultural Ambassadors; this was part of a government sponsored tour. Ozomatli is all about addressing local, national, and international social issues. I think they are incredibly talented; they create amazing music and beyond that they have such a message behind what they do. I don't know how to talk about world peace without sounding incredibly cliche and naive... but attending a concert in Mongolia funded by the U.S. government, performed by a mixed group from L.A. that got Mongolians and foreign people alike on their feet and dancing and singing together... maybe that's a good start. If you don't know about this group I think you should check them out. Even if you don't agree with their political views I think we all gotta respect what they do.