Last week, Brian, the Deputy Director of the CHF program and Altanbagana Bayarsikhan
or "Bagana", as I call him, who is the Program Director for the spin off non profit corporation, and I, visited the branch office in Darkhan and some of the recipients of service in that city. It is a city of about 75,000 people about three hours North of Ulaanbaatar and the temperature was about your average 0 degree Fahrenheit or colder. I know it was -33 degrees Celsius in Ulaanbaatar that day. Anyway, it was your average cold day in Mongolia. We visited some of the service recipients and the branch office and the 7 very good staff, who work in that branch office. Even with a very down economy, they are meeting their quotas of services delivered to small businesses in Darkhan.
There is a market about a half block from the office that is open everyday and Brian asked me if I wanted to go over and do some shopping after lunch. It seemed to be a little cold to be doing much shopping but we went over to the market and checked it out and this is basically the way it is everyday of the week.
I am sure my old buddy Nelson in Chicago would have loved to have been there to challenge some of the pool players at minus 18 degrees Celsius and they play there everyday except when they cover the tables when it is snowing and there is very little precipitation in the area.
It is also a good place to buy a whole sheep and one of the best parts of a sheep, as you might not know, is the very fatty tail, so they leave some of the wool on it to highlight it. The skinned sheep and pigs are definitely frozen and no flies are buzzing around like you might see in Mexico.
The quilts were nice and looked warm but not as nice as the ones Rene makes.
I might have bought something but I was not really interested in taking my hands out of my gloves in order to get money out of my bill fold.
