# Welcome to the House of Fun #

On Friday our house was transformed for a day into a house of fear, trepidation and toilet paper hanging from the ceiling. Yes, that’s right – we had a Hallowe'en Party! Jon, Jude and I invited our colleagues and friends along to our house party. Little did we know that almost everyone accepted our invitations… 40 Mongolians turned up. This made for a pretty good party! The Mongolians had never experienced a Hallowe'en party before (having only heard about them through American films/sitcoms). They were all pretty intrigued. They also loved the idea of having a house party. As many Mongolians still live in gers (tent houses), or live with their families, house parties are pretty tricky to organise. We all had a good time, and the house is still in one piece!

Preparing for Network Meeting – The work I’ve been doing for the last few weeks is close to its fruition. This coming Friday the 9th of November I’ll be helping to host an important meeting for the National Volunteer Network. The meeting will allow the 21 different member organisations to get to know each other better and share their skills. It will also contain two discussions. We’ll be looking at how to change the procedures of the network (the voting process, the amount of time one organisation can host the network, whether there is a need for a presidential figure), and will be planning the network’s 2008 strategy. We’ve encouraged some of the local press to come to cover the event, so if many turn up we’ll be raising the profile of volunteerism in Mongolia. I’ve managed to get the English language press to turn up too (The Mongol Messenger and the UB Post). Any articles they write may prove useful for future fundraising proposals. The attached photo has little to do with the meeting, besides from the fact that it's a view from the conference centre where the meeting will take place. Enjoy!

The COLD – yep, it’s starting to get pretty cold here in Ulaanbaatar. Last week’s average was -7C, and I’ve been told it’s just the start. By January the average will be -25C, and will sometimes hit -35C! The result of this cold is that many of Ulaanbaatar’s street children end up sleeping in the sewers. The children go to sleep next to the heating pipes that run underground. Whilst I’ve read about this problem, it was pretty shocking to see this first-hand, and actually see young people climb in and out of the manholes in the streets. I feel very lucky to have my warm room to return to everyday.

That’s me signing off for another week. Warm wishes from a cold Mongolia,

Robert