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Dear Liz
Partolan-Fray,
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February 5, 2009
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IFDS
Featured Program: Mongolia:
Empire and Democracy
Dates: June 21 - July 1, 2009
Itinerary: This 11-day academic seminar takes you off-the-beaten-track to the
birthplace of Chinggis Khaan, to a remote ger camp, to lectures on
Mongolian Buddhism, and along the footsteps of traditional Mongolian nomads.
Mongolia Musings
from 2008 Participants
The following excerpts are from the blog “Heard
from afar” by Clyde Bentley, participant on the 2008 Mongolia
IFDS, with photographs by fellow participant, Dan Olds.
* Sunday,
June 1, 2008
“Missouri’s
learned envoys to the Land of the Endless Blue Sky arrived in Ulaanbaatar
Sunday evening after one heck of a long time on our bottoms in a variety of
semi-comfortable seats. But we were all in good spirits, especially when Dan,
Monke, and Brian  from the trip showed up and we found that Ted from
Tennessee had been on the plane with us.
…We took a bus
down the bumpy road to the Flower Hotel. Brian White, the host from CIEE,
explained that Ulaanbaatar is like Las Vegas – very pretty at night. You make
the call in the daylight.
It is indeed a city of lights. Not a
lot of traffic, but interesting signs – the Hanburger. The Khan Brau beer
palace, etc.
The Flower Hotel is older but nice.
It has a famous Japanese restaurant and a bathhouse. But I most appreciated
the in-room Internet for just $4 a day. And the bed.”
* Thursday, June 5,
2008
“In the past
couple of days, I've chatted with a Buddhist monk, posed with Lenin's statue,
eaten horse for lunch, examined the bullet-riddled skulls of purged Mongolians,
wandered the infamous Ulaanbaatar Black Market and, well, had one hell of a
time.”
* Monday, June 9,
2008
“My energy and my
enthusiasm are at odds with each other tonight. It is after midnight and I am
dog tired. But my head is still swimming with the sights, sounds, and smells
of three days on the road in rural Mongolia.
 Chingaas Khaan spent most of his youth in Khentii
region of northeast Mongolia.
Accompanied by
Mongolian historians O. Sukhbaatar and Munkh-Erdene Lhamsuren, we caravaned
through Khentii in two Russian jeep/vans and a more modern but less
comfortable Mitsubishi. It was a tour of history, wonder, lifestyles, and
vistas tempered with a developing environmental disaster.
Mongolia is dry
in the best of years. But this year the rains did not come to Khenti. The
grass in the pasture takes a good eye to find. The cattle are thin and many
carcasses littered the landscape. And this is early summer. With no grass
now, the livestock have little chance of making it through the sub-zero weather.
If the herds die, so do the
Mongolians.”
* Tuesday, June 10,
2008
“Today was our
wrap-up session, as half the group leaves for home tomorrow and the rest
(including me) goes on a side jaunt to the Gobi Desert. The farewells were
bittersweet, but the conclusion of the tour gave us a chance to contemplate
Mongolia as the academics we are.
This is a country of surprises,
challenges, and opportunities. It is all but unknown to most of America, but
once changed the entire civilized world and is positioned to have major
impact again.
Our trip to the
very rural countryside emphasized the contrasts in Mongolia. We were all
delighted to return to Ulaanbaatar, which in comparison seems on the cutting
edge of modernity. As Brian White noted about the capital, "We are
hanging on to civilized life by our fingertips here."
But as the sages
among us have noted, all that could change in an eye blink. Mongolia has
discovered that its herds of goats graze over a fortune of buried minerals.
Will it become the new Kuwait? And if so, will the people benefit or just the
leaders and their foreign sponsors?”
* Final
Words…
“I learned as
much about myself, my school, and my profession on this trip as I did about
the simple cow herder who conquered most of the civilized world.”
Clyde Bentley is an associate professor of journalism at the
University of Missouri, where he oversees a citizen journalism effort that
links traditional media with blogs and other user-generated content. He also
was a working journalist for nearly 25 years. His work has sent him abroad
several times, including a teaching trip to Mongolia in 2002. He and his
wife, Cecile, have two grown children and live in Columbia, MO. In addition
to his blog, Clyde has a website of his photographs: http://flickr.com/photos/clydebentley/sets/72157605395629833/.
Dan Olds is the Program Director for the CIEE Study Centers in
Asia and Australia. Dan  joined the CIEE Mongolia IFDS seminar in 2008 as a
CIEE Representative. An amateur photographer, Dan was able to capture the
visual beauty of Mongolia.
Application
Deadline
The February 15th
deadline is quickly approaching. To apply for the Mongolia seminar, or one
of our other 23 IFDS 2009 seminars, click here.
2009 Seminar
Itineraries
Announcing a new
website feature – the 2009 Seminar Itineraries! Go to http://ciee.org/IFDS/seminars.aspx
and click on the seminar of your choice to research what your trip will
entail this summer.
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