New Year's Resolution: keep on blogging

Happy New Year! I hope 2008 is a great year for all of you, full of success and happiness. The start of the year has been good so far. I spent the New Year period in Ulaanbaatar with some of the Filipino volunteers. Joe kindly hosted a big New Year's Eve party at his house, to which the entire Filipino population of Mongolia was invited (or so it seemed!). It was great, especially as it was a real family occasion - people of all ages were there. We eat so much delicious food, and partied the night away. As the only non-Filipino there I felt very privileged to be part of their celebrations. What else has been going on recently?

Ulaanbaatar during the New Year period – Sukhbaatar Square (Mongolia’s Parliament Square) was the centre of the festivities, and was full of interesting things. There was a giant “New Year’s tree” and many colourful lights hanging from the Square’s flagpoles. However, the thing that really caught my eye was the array of ice sculptures that had been erected. Giant ice pigs were posing for the cameras, and people were sitting down on the Olympics themed ice-podium. One of the sculptures was interactive – an ice slide which people were skidding down. This was great fun! I wish London did something similar!

Eagles! – Some of the people from the west of Mongolia had come to Ulaanbaatar, and brought with them their magnificent eagles. It was really impressive to see the birds up close – I wouldn’t pick a fight with them! They had huge claws and beaks, and when they stretched their wings they looked massive. After seeing the birds I felt a mixture of emotions – it’s quite sad to see these majestic animals kept in captivity, but the very old tradition of using eagles for hunting is really beautiful.

Back to work after the Christmas break - It’s actually not too bad to be back at work (the only pain is having to get out of bed early in the morning!). I’m going to concentrate on three things in the coming couple of months. Perhaps most importantly, I’ll be trying to get funding for the volunteer network I work for, so that in the future they can hire a Mongolian to do the work that I’m currently doing. Aside from that, I'm going to create a resource CD for Mongolian volunteers, full of information on key skills that a good volunteer should have (e.g. how to write a press release, how to run a good group meeting, etc). Finally, I’ll work with my Mongolian colleagues to set up a volunteers’ forum, a group of volunteers who meet regularly to help each other. This forum can also provide a voice to Mongolia’s volunteer community (the network I work for currently only really caters for volunteering organisations, and not really volunteers themselves). All of that should keep me busy…

Best wishes to all of you, have a good start to the year,

Robert