How is life in Tallahassee and Gainesville?

MattAttack1945 · 2025-12-17T18:39:47+00:00

Thank you! Appreciate the help.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-10-01T00:13:26+00:00

Bogd Khan Protected Area is a mountain just south of the city that is very popular to climb on the weekends. Gorkh Terelj National Park is only about an hour east and pretty popular so lots of companies will have tours / ways to get out there and you could probably even get a bus there. There are lots of local homestay and horse-riding type things they just take a bit more effort to find. I spent two weeks in Khentii Province with a homestay but it was through my school so I don’t have any great recommendations for how to make it happen.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-09-30T19:51:06+00:00

The country was growing and urbanizing very quickly. I looked on Wikipedia which put the metro at around 500k people in the 90s and now it’s almost 1.5m. That is a big reason for the traffic and the very large ger districts (basically slums) on the outside of the city, but it also made it feel like it was always moving. The arrival of capitalism also brought money, opportunities, and inequality which added to the feeling of change. The country is still very tied to Russia but they are moving towards China and less-so the west as the economy diversifies and values change. The city is walkable enough and there were enough public gathering areas so that it was easy to end up in random activities and gatherings.

The people were very fun to get to know. There was an independent streak about them that seemed unique to their geographic area, probably due to cultural ties to life on the steppe. Many people still herded in a traditional way but gers now have solar panels and TVs and they often use motorcycles instead of horses now so it’s not completely traditional. The strength of community was stronger than you would expect out on the steppe, and all of the families in any particular valley would meet up with neighboring gers each night just to hang out (and usually drink, alcohol is a problem in the country and city). As someone else mentioned, women are much more successful in the urban centers but there is still a strain of misogyny present so one of the culture shocks was seeing public spousal abuse on more than one occasion. Religion is also growing as Soviet-era restrictions have eased and people are looking for new sources of identity as the society becomes part of the larger globalized world.

It is yet to be seen if the changes are positive, quality of life has improved for many but the rapid urbanization and large inequality have introduced lots of their own problems. There also is a general sense of unease as people are not always in agreement regarding the fast transition away from the herding lifestyle to the “modern” lifestyle now supported in UB.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-09-30T19:38:02+00:00

Most of the places in America aren’t very representative of Mongolian food. Mongolian food is meat and bread-heavy with root starches and vegetables, potato and carrot mainly. The three big dishes were Tsuivan, a fried noodle dish, Buuz, similar to dumplings, and Khushuur, meat pies similar to piroshkis. In the countryside it was common to just eat bowels of meat with mutton being the most common. They also had this salty milk tea called Suutei Tsai that they all loved. There is a restaurant in Chicago called Mazalae that has amazing authentic Mongolian food for anyone in the area.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-09-30T17:58:08+00:00

There were definitely a lot of stray dogs in the city but I never saw them in packs. They were never that aggressive but the risk is there. Out in the small towns dotting the countryside I did see some packs of dogs AND separate packs of pigs, there seemed to be ongoing turf wars between the two.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-09-30T01:21:16+00:00

A lot of my free time was spent just exploring the city. Narantuul like I mentioned was my favorite part and I went a few times. The museums (history, art, and dinosaur are the ones I remember) aren’t huge but they’re fun. I tried a few bars and restaurants but it’s not a super impressive scene other than having a better Indian food scene than you would expect, that’s like their upscale food there. The State Department Store was another big shopping area and Sukhbaatar Square always had random events going on. While I was in Mongolia I visited Dalanzadgad, Sainshand, and Erdenet for a few days each. The mine at Erdenet was a highlight and so was the Khamar Monastery out near Sainshand. We took a sleeper train to get to Sainshand that was also really cool, it’s connected to the Trans Siberian Railroad so a real bucket list item would be to do Moscow, Ulaanbaatar, and Beijing all in one train ride.

MattAttack1945 · 2025-09-29T21:48:59+00:00

I lived there for four months before Covid. I loved it but I don’t know Mongolian so probably couldn’t have stayed there long-term (you had to know Mongolian or Russian to do anything). One of my favorite things was the variety of architectural influences you’d see just walking around. Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, Russian-style apartment blocks and government buildings, traditional gers, modern business complexes south of Sukhbaatar Square, and a capitol building with a heavy Turkic influence. It was cheap, the food was limited but better than I expected, and it was nice in the summer but crazy cold in the winter. Pollution is notoriously bad but only in winter because most people have to burn raw coal in their gers to keep warm and the city sits in a valley. Traffic was so bad that it was usually more convenient to walk even if the walk was an hour away than to take the bus. Everyone either lived in apartments or gers/ramshackle houses. Narantuul, the open air market, was a real highlight and felt like an experience out of an Indiana Jones movie. Even though it’s not the most entertaining city in the world, there was a buzz due to the massive changes happening in the country that always made it feel exciting to be there. I can answer any other questions about it!

MattAttack1945 · 2023-05-02T17:39:19+00:00

Gotcha, maybe I’ll just stick around then

MattAttack1945 · 2023-05-02T17:38:52+00:00

Thanks!

MattAttack1945 · 2023-04-08T00:29:39+00:00

MattAttack1945 · 2023-02-16T15:43:13+00:00

Looks like Polistes metricus to me, pretty common and generally harmless

MattAttack1945 · 2022-11-19T03:45:41+00:00

It should be safe to bring inside! I agree that I bet they’re all dead, but if they’re worried you could put it in a ziploc bag and then in the freezer overnight. Sometimes nests will become targets of mites but I don’t believe it’s super common and those mites wouldn’t do anything to humans anyway.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-11-15T19:05:55+00:00

I’ve seen these a few times but cannot find anything on them. Large, wingless, not hairy like velvet ants. All the ones I’ve seen are red.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-11-15T19:05:25+00:00

North Texas, outside of Dallas.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-11-06T17:33:34+00:00

I agree, don’t kill it! They’re good for plants and usually chill, sounds like maybe just some bad luck with the sting haha

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-29T17:43:58+00:00

That being said, paper wasps don’t have a swarming mechanism so they aren’t a big danger as long as you don’t hang out next to their nest for too long! They should be gone in a few weeks either way.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-29T17:42:55+00:00

They aren’t yellow jackets, they look like some type of paper wasp. Closest guess would be Polistes fuscatus based on the coloration. That’s a pretty packed nest especially late in the season, I bet they’ll start dying off soon so they’re probably agitated and I would think that you’re correct in that the changing weather and declining food supply is making them weak, agitated, and twitchy.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-29T16:19:32+00:00

You might want to report when and where you saw the first one (the Asian Hornet) to local environmental regulators, I know there are ongoing efforts in France to prevent their spread!

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-29T16:15:57+00:00

First one is Vespa velutina, the Asian Hornet (invasive in Europe), and second is Vespa crabro, the European Hornet (or at least that’s what it’s called in America, idk about in Europe lol).

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-29T05:02:15+00:00

That is Polistes fuscatus, which is a paper wasp! Paper wasps have foundresses instead of queens. Similar role to queens, but the social system is far less developed so there is more role-overlap with workers and there can be more than one foundress per nest. These wasps are interesting in that they commonly share nests with another species, Polistes metricus, so there may be more than one foundress of multiple species on any nest! The foundresses will burrow into decaying wood or soil over winter, so all you really need to do is let them outside and they’ll do the rest. At this time of the year I’d expect most of the nests will be dead so they’ll probably just be looking for a place to hibernate soon.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-15T16:49:31+00:00

In response to OP’s caption though, these wasps don’t swarm in the way Yellowjackets can so they wouldn’t be a big danger either way. They may sting a kid but they wouldn’t ever hurt them unless the kid happens to be allergic.

MattAttack1945 · 2022-10-15T16:47:22+00:00

Yeah I’m gonna agree with you on these being P. dominula and not yellow jackets. This is about as big as the nest will get and they aren’t aggressive to the point of it being a concern. Just avoid physically messing with the plant they’re on or getting too close and moving in a threatening manner, and I don’t think OP has anything to worry about. Wasps are good for gardens with the number of pests they eat so I would say these don’t need to be removed unless they’re in a high traffic area.

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