July 23, 2015: Ulaanbaatar and the return to it all

I was tempted to write this entry like a travelogue, complete with vaguely dramatic phrases like, “We woke on the morning of such and such to begin our journey to which and what.” I think I'll forgo that, though, and try to give a more honest accounting.

So, I woke on the morning of July 18 (I think) at 6 a.m with the order to get to the school by 630 so that we could leave by 7. At 7:10, we left finally when the last of the people giving the order to show up at 630 actually showed up. In the interrim, the town was mostly occupied by dogs, as most people were not yet awake. One of my colleagues has a dog which he has nicknamed “Gooey”, and which is apparently very fond of him, as he followed said colleague to school, about a 20-minute walk. This and two other particularly brave dogs approached us for pets and whatever food they thought we had. As it turned out, a different colleague showed up with a roll of ham (something approaching pepperoni or a summer sausage, but without the spices) that he couldn't finish entirely by his onesy, and the dogs were duly rewarded for their bravery.

Anyway, we did end up leaving at about 10 after, and there began a blessedly uneventful 4-hour trip to the capital. I variously nodded off and read as the time slipped by. We rolled in to UB about 11ish.

The group of us, 14 from my city and I think 12 from Emily's, were split mostly by gender between two “guesthouses” (hostels) called Mongol steppe 1 and Mongol steppe 2. Emily and I were given our own room (with a double bed!) in Mongol steppe 1, an entirely female dorm with eight others sharing bunkbeds in the room adjacent to ours. To give an idea of what it was like: it was a third-floor walk up apartment crammed with four bunkbeds, a desk and a computer, a small kitchen which was, despite its size, well-stocked, and the double-bed room which Emily and I occupied. There was a small balcony – maybe four people could fit on it at once, if they were feeling adventurous.

The first day was loaded (as was the second, but we'll get to that). We started out with lunch at an Indian restaurant called “Namaste”. It was good, but not quite of the caliber of some of my favorite Indian restaurants back home, Guru notwithstanding. Also, it was expensive (by Mongolian standards), and the PC had given us very little in the way of walking-around money for such an expensive city.

After Namaste, a group of about seven or eight of us walked to Gandan Temple, which houses an enormous statue of Buddha which, for some reason, had four arms. My understanding of Buddhism and the Buddha has apparently been very limited, as I didn't know that the Buddha was revered as a god in the sense that his status as a man was open to interpretation among most Buddhists. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, as religion is the most nuanced universal truth out there (little joke, that).

The visit raised an old debate in my mind concerning the nature of idols, religious community, and religion more generally. I suppose I'm an atheist, though what exactly that means in the face of my belief in what might be called the soul is somewhat difficult to reconcile (I manage it, somehow). It came down to this: bringing idols into it and allowing the worship of them pushes one toward an...

You know what? I like that you all are reading my blog. I suppose I'd rather not alienate anyone. If anyone's interested in a spirited back and forth about belief and religion, send me an e-mail.

The statue was quite large, and was surrounded on all sides by Buddhist prayer wheels – you spin the wheels and meditate on your prayer, and the wheel's motion sends your prayer to 'heaven'. Each time the wheel is spun, that prayer (and all the others attached to it) are repeated as many times as the wheel spins. At least, I think that's what the belief is.

The temple in which the statue was housed was very tall, probably four stories, though we only had access to the first. There were dozens of people filing in and out, all of whom seemed very respectful and genuinely reverent. The atmosphere was very quiet; shuffling feet and the sound of the wheels spinning while rain hammered the roof and thunder rumbled in the skies outside. Offerings of money were made to the images of hundreds of lamas covering the back and right-hand walls. The statue of Buddha sat in the center, looming large and illuminated by strategically placed lights.

The temple is located not in the heart of downtown, per se, but certainly in the heart of the city itself. I forgot to ask how old the place was, but I believe it's at least 200 years old. The entrance is set in such a way that, when you leave, you are staring into the mountains on the outskirts of UB which were, at the time I left, covered with fog. The deep saturation of colors brought on by the rain and the fog solidified the experience in a way which would not have been possible (for me) on a bright, hot, sunny day. We left with heavy minds, each thinking our own thoughts.

We headed back into the city proper. A long walk brought us to the State Department Store, which was so similar to an American shopping mall that it was almost uncomfortably uncanny. It felt like being back in the states – after weeks of people staring at me, possibly the only foreigner/American they've ever seen, it was a huge weight off of my shoulders to be casually ignored. I mean, the place even had a Cinnabon (two of them, in fact) and a cafe.

After that, my group waltzed to the Peace Corps office (ostensibly the reason for the trip in the first place). It was a nice place, complete with cold filtered water (a luxury here) and a pile of clothes and whatnot left behind by previous volunteers. I made out like a bandit with a pair of pants, a button-down shirt, two sweaters, and a comfortable winter coat. Oh, and a bunch of books which I am looking forward to reading.

On the way back to the hostel, we intersected with Emily's group, and I joined up with them for dinner at a Cuban restaurant. This was the first time I got to be with Emily (she and her group had gotten to UB before I and mine had), so the two of us were fairly elated. The food was excellent, the drinks were scintillating though expensive, and the company was pleasant (the other people in Emily's group). We spent the rest of the night together, although we were forced to split up after breakfast the next morning (waffles with gellato, donchaknow).

Having promised to meet my group at the Mongolian National Museum after breakfast, I duly walked in the wrong direction for at least 15 minutes before turning around, and was equally duly late getting to the museum. I remember walking down the street and thinking to myself, “Come on, just look for something you recognize,” at which point the words “Fuck you”, spray painted in red on the side of a building, leaped out at me. Just like home.

[This last bit was written later after having unintentionally inhaled an extreme amount of paint thinner fumes.]

I did, however, eventually turn around and head in the correct direction, and met up with the remainder of my group. We toured the museum, and headed back to the hotel to meet up with our mikr (microbus) back to site.

The journey back may have been the most interesting part: before we got even 10 minutes outside of UB, we were held up by a flooded road. A retaining wall had broken, and the water gushed onto the street. When we were eventually able to ford the breach, we had a wake behind us which threw waves up to the windows and roofs of the smaller cars around us. It was pretty wild.

During the crossing, however, the other mikr carrying the remainder of our group apparently got a lot of water in the engine, and it broke down no fewer than three times on the way back. This resulted in that mikr fusing with ours (thankfully with about ten minutes left in the drive), meaning that there were no fewer than 21 people in that mikr, driver included. There were, officially, seats for 12. There's a saying in Mongolia about transportation: how many people can fit in this car/mikr/bus/taxi? One more.

MORE TO COME LATER I AM TOO ZONKED TO CONTINUE. 

July so far

July 4, 2015

Well, this won't go up on the Fourth, but I have a long-running, personal tradition of writing a reflective essay on the state of the States every Fourth of July. Obviously, I'm not as up on the goings-on, but I still have opinions (dammit), and I'm happy to share them.

First, the things that make me sad, in brief:

The issue of money in politics continues to make elections a matter of voting against, rather than voting for. It doesn't seem to be changing any time soon, despite the best efforts of WolfPac and like-minded groups like Represent.us. This is a bi-partisan issue (perhaps the only true bi-partisan issue); nearly every one I've spoken to, even my hardcore conservative family members, believes that there is too much money in politics subverting the will of the people and democracy itself. You'd think the government would respond to it, in some way, but studies have demonstrated (sorry, no internet to link to the article) that politicians and legislators in this country respond to the interests of the wealthy far more often than those of the middle class, and only very rarely respond to those issues stressed by the poor. Is the problem awareness? Apathy? Lethargy? (On whose part?) Will 2016 be the year this becomes a major electoral issue?

Climate change continues unabated, though this year was a milestone of sorts: the last data I saw indicated that 2014 was the first year that the USA leveled off its emissions. While this is a huge step forward, keeping emissions at their current levels still poses unacceptable, society-altering warming. Though this is my pet cause, as it were, I'm growing discouraged. The dust storms in drought-ridden Mongolia have driven home that point – ten years ago, dust storms were extremely infrequent, an almost unknown occurrence. They were so infrequent, in fact, that Mongolians don't have a word for it; my host family said there's a phrase which identifies a dust storm as being “when the Earth meets the sky.” Since I've been here, I've seen at least 10, including one today. Suffice it to say, I am not optimistic. (Update: there was another dust storm today, July 6.. The high winds exacerbated a fire that was started by lightning strike in a nearby wheat field.)

That last one is just as much about America as it is about... well, everywhere else. I guess it'd be nice to focus on something good, though, which is actually pretty easy: the Peace Corps. These are intelligent, dedicated, creative people giving their time and talents to represent their country and make some small stab at bettering the state of humanity The way I see it, the Peace Corps is spreading America's inherent advantages in education and expertise around the world. I hope that doesn't sound pretentious, but these are largely circumstantial advantages – the fact that we all grew up speaking English, the language of international business, or that we grew up in a totally uncontested military hegemon – one which, by the way, has not and did not follow the path of previous military giants in conquering the known world. If one factors geography and climate into the equation, it becomes even more a product of circumstance, and luck.

I find a great deal to be proud of as an American, especially from the outside looking in. I've learned quite a lot about life from my short time in Mongolia already, and expect to be a... not a changed man, exactly, but different man, if you know what I mean. If not? Well, that makes at least two of us. By way of explanation, though, I'll say this: it is endlessly fascinating to me that I am able to maintain a more optimistic view of my country from the outside than I was when I was still in it. Granted, optimism in my case doesn't mean terribly much, but still.

July 10, 2015: Naadam

I am by no means the first to notice this, but I don't think it's a coincidence that “fried egg” and “Friday” sound similar, and that most people tend to check out mentally on the ultimate weekday.

Today, Emily and I (and the 70-some odd others who've joined up) were given an exam of sorts called a “Mock LPI”. The LPI stands for, I think, Language Proficiency Index, a means by which we are gauged at our level of language acquisition. I have no idea how I did; there are verb endings and similar-sounding words that bedevil me no matter how often I memorize them, but I suppose it all comes with time. [Update: I did okay, apparently. My pronunciation is good, but my listening comprehension is very poor if I haven't studied the phrases used in class.]

Yesterday, my site and Emily's met together (at hers) to celebrate the Mongolian national holiday Naadam. As the main event of the summer (so to speak) it's an opportunity to eat hoshur (a kind of fried meat pocket that puts Hot Pockets to shame) and to watch the three “manly” sports: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. Emily and I took it as an opportunity to cheat the system that separated us, and spent the entire day together, looking quite spiffy in our deels (pronounced dell, sort of), a traditional Mongolian outfit. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been unable to take any photos due to the loss of my phone, but once Emily and I are reunited around mid-August, we'll hopefully be able to upload some pictures from her camera.

Aside from a bit too much sun on our faces and a layer of dust on our exposed skin (dust kicked up by thousands of feet, hooves, and tires and carried by a consistent, strong wind), Naadam was a lot of fun. When my group arrived, we strode (all 14 of us) into the celebratory area around the stadium (where the wrestling bouts take place) and were greeted by enthusiastic and extremely amused Mongolians. I suppose it was mocking, but of a gentle sort; the fact that we're taking the time to integrate, and especially the fact that we speak a little bit of Mongolian, left any Mongolians we interacted with quite pleased. Shortly after our arrival, we were invited into the Mayor's ger for a brief meet-and-greet. Throughout the day, we wandered around the various vendors, and ate hushur, ice cream, and a pork kebab which included enormous chunks of fat that were actually not bad. I should stress: these were chunks of fat, not chunks of fat and meat. Most of the rest of the time, we watched wrestling.

Mongolian wrestling is a highly ritualized thing. After slapping their thighs, backsides, then thighs again, the wrestlers trot out to a waiting officiant who inspects their outfit to ensure everything is in order. The outfit itself is essentially a Speedo-like bottom, a top that covers their arms, shoulders and upper backs, which is tied with a rope knot around their torsos, and a rounded, pointed hat with no bill. The official removes the wrestler's hat for him, and he presents himself to the crowd, then awaits his opponent. (A quick note: I'm using “he him and his” as opposed to a gender-neutral term because wrestling here is not gender neutral – all wrestlers are male.) The object is to throw your opponent to the ground; if they land on hands or feet, the match continues, but anything else ends it. Think of it like a runner or receiver in American football – a knee or forearm hits the ground, and the runner is ruled “down”. Whoever hits the ground first loses. The winner and loser then walk past each other and give a convivial slap on the ass. The loser receives his hat back and must put it on himself. The winner has hit hat replaced by the official, presents himself again to the audience, receives something as a pittance to distribute to fellow wrestlers and those watching, and the whole thing begins again with new wrestlers.

It was really fun to watch. The wrestlers were divided into young and old (old being, maybe, mid-40s), though size difference was clearly not taken into consideration. All were in good physical condition and very strong, but some were much bigger. I later asked my host father about this, as when we were watching bouts at the national Naadam there were pictures and videos from older matches in which all of the wrestlers were much thinner. He explained it as a function of diet; there's simply far more available to eat in Mongolia now with a higher caloric value than there ever has been before.

I should also mention that Naadam takes place over a few weeks, and some soums (towns) celebrate at different times. My host city, for instance, celebrated on July 3^rd and 4^th, where Emily's celebrated on the 9^th, and the national Naadam celebrations take place from the 11^th -14^th.

In other news: I have eaten giddis (innards), I have drunk airag (fermented mare's milk – very sour and hardly intoxicating), and have meditated on top of a mountain. We got a fair bit of rain two days ago, but the parched ground sucked it all up. We had another dust storm today, though blessedly short and relatively mild.

Oh, almost forgot: to corroborate my earlier point (from a different post) about the Soviet predilection for stone sculptures and central squares, I want to point out that the main park in my city is dotted with odd-looking sculptures of various animals; there's a camel, a snake, a panda, a dinosaur (brontosaurus, I think), a few lions, some eagles, etc. Many of these are are crumbling, and the paint, though it seems to have been refreshed at some point, is fading. This gives them an oddly sinister look in the right light, as if their decaying faces were reproachfully glaring at the fleshy meat-sacks (humans) who weren't supposed to outlive them.

Also: there are three clusters of apartment buildings in my city, all built in a square formation with a central “communal” area in the middle. The school itself is structured similarly; though it is one solid building and not nearly as big, it features a breezeway to the main entrance which is set on a largely empty stone courtyard. Very near to the school is a “main square” in front of a government building, another open, concrete space. I'm trying to think of something to compare it to in either Kentucky or Kansas, but nothing's coming to mind. Maybe the campus at NKU? Maybe?

It's been a while since I've seen a vegetable that wasn't a potato. The diet here consists of a bare minimum of 85% meat. Granted, I made that statistic up on the spot, but if someone took the time to conduct the study, I think my prediction would be near the mark. Occasionally carrots work their way into the mix, and I eat a fair amount of eggs and bread, but every every every meal has meat in it. I'm considering a vegetarian diet for the first few months at site – it seems likely that Emily and I will be placed in a city, which typically has good access to vegetables. I hope I hope I hope. If not, it's a definite vegetarian lifestyle when we get back to the States. For, like, a year. Just to allow my stomach some time off. Near-constant irritable bowel syndrome, over here.

I'll leave you with that thought. And the fact that I live without running water.

July 17, 2015: Pros and Cons

Well, we lost a few people to the rigors of the Peace Corps, and even a higher up in the organization whose resignation was somewhat sudden. I won't share names; for one thing, you wouldn't know who they were anyway, and for another it's just bad policy. No need to call out people who are obviously already dealing with a lot.

Peace Corps is not an easy thing to do. We're away from home, from friends, from the comforts we spent our entire lives enjoying, in a different country where a massive language barrier denies you access to your usual means of forming relationships. You're trying to learn the language while maintaining a relationship with your host family, your fellow Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), your Language and Cultural Facilitators (LCFs) and, in Emily's and my case, with your spouse who lives in another city for ten weeks. There's constant threat of illness, especially of the GI variety, and you're not allowed to keep pets, no matter how cute they are. (If you're wondering, we are discouraged from keeping pets while we're at site – the main portion of our time here – and forbidden while we're in training. Mongolians simply don't keep pets unless they serve a purpose; a cat exists to kill mice, a dog to warn against criminals and intruders of all sorts, a horse to ride, and most everything else is to eat or milk.) I have yet to eat a meal that didn't include boiled meat, and have eaten three eggs for breakfast almost every day since I've been with my host family. This is all not to mention the lack of running water, which means outhouses for “waste disposal” and no hot showers. There is also no such thing as a garbage dump, here. Near as I can tell, trash is either left to rot wherever it falls, or burned.

On the other hand, the people here are tremendously hospitable. My host family bought me a traditional Mongolian garment called a deel (pronounced dell) shirt, and are planning on buying me another, full-length deel before I leave. This is after having known me for 6 weeks. After our trip for Naadam, I can confidently say that all other PCVs I've seen have been treated to the same. I am included in the family; my brothers call me brother, my host father calls me his “big son”, and my host mother constantly frets about whether I'm eating enough. Last weekend, my host family agreed to allow me to have a few friends over two nights in a row – the first night, they showed up with extra beer and snacks for a crowd of about 10 Americans, and the second night, they let four friends stay the night, and fed them in the morning. One particularly hung over friend even got treated to an impromptu shower. Host community members who have never even met us frequently come in to the classroom to help us practice speaking and listening in Mongolian.

I'm atrocious at both listening and speaking, by the way. I'm putting in the effort, I really am – I make flashcards of the various words I've learned and try to memorize the verb and noun cases and concurrent endings. Frankly, though, there's just so much to do at all times that the best I can usually manage is to pick up a few new words which I can read and write but absolutely cannot understand when spoken. The various forms of the vowel sound “O” are absolutely maddening, and I constantly get them wrong.

To summarize, it's not hard to believe that some people decided that the Peace Corps wasn't for them, but it's equally plausible to believe that every single one of us will make it through the full two years.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading. We miss you terribly.

July 20, 2015: Ulaanbaatar trip

I haven't written this one yet. 

First and second entries from !MONGOLIA!

This entry consists of three discrete entries; the first is this brief blurb, followed by two others (one of which I didn't get a chance to finish). We have some spotty internet access while in Darkhan for what's called "Mid-Center Days", a brief time away from our host families during which we reconnect with our other volunteers and suss a few things out. 

Darkhan is a beautiful city in its own right, and with its 90,000 people is the second-largest in Mongolia (behind the capital, which boasts 1.5 million). I am quite pleased to be able to spend the next three days with Emily, as before this we had been separated in two different cities (more on that below). It's also nice to have access to a shower with hot, running water. I'm hoping to get a game of Catan going later tonight. 

We miss you all dearly, but are holding steadfast to the cause. I'll try to write more (in consultation with Emily), and post when I can. 

As you might already know, my access (and Emily's) to the interwebs is somewhat limited. As a result, I've not been able to update this here blog, which means: INFO DUMP!

My memory is a little foggy so I'm going to jump around from place to place -- in other words, this won't necessarily be linear. Also, I haven't yet been able to see Emily since we left Darkhan (about nine days ago), so this will be mostly me-centered.

Yesterday (Saturday June 13), my host family and I went for a picnic along the Orkhon River, the longest in Mongolia. My host family consists of my host father, an easy-natured man who likes to laugh; my host mother, equally quick to laugh but possessed of no ability to speak English; the older of my two host brothers, an avid body-builder with ambitions of studying in America; and my younger host brother, perhaps the most easy-going of all, and who has enough English to act as the interpreter. For the most part, my conversations with them have consisted of the "point and say" game; I carry around a little notebook that I can write words and phrases in.

This is the same notebook I use for my English lessons, taught at a high school about a ten minute walk from our house. For the frist couple of times, one or the other of my brothers would walk with me to school, but I now have a somewhat longer leash. Most days, I'm up at about 8, eat, head to Mongolian language class from 9-1, then home for lunch. After lunch (and a possible nap), I'm back at school for what we call "technical session" by 230; these lessons are basically discussing teaching methods and the Peace Corps' philosophy on teaching language more generally. The first week has been mostly what could be described as "theory", but next week (beginning Monday June 15) we will start micro-teaching. These are mini-lessons of about 40 minutes each, where I and a partner work out a lesson plan and teach it to... I think four different classes. We've chosen school-related items, and this week's lesson objective is to teach our students between 5-10 new vocabulary words. Book, pen, chalk, notebook, desk, classroom, school, etc. As of this moment (as of the time of writing), I'm not sure whether we'll introduce any verbs or stick to nouns only; grammar and whatnot don't come until next lesson.

For my part, my Mongolian vocabulary is itself growing, though the grammar is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I understand simple past and simple future, but oddly cannot conjugate verbs in the simple present just yet. I can read Cyrillic pretty well, now, although the letter H in Cyrillic is pronounced "in", and the N is actually "ee", which confuses me. Also, y is pronounced "oo", but not exactly "oo", more like "ou"... if you have a free second, look up the various vowel sounds in Mongolian and look only at the "o" sounds. It's tough. No tougher than learning English, I'm sure, but still tough.

My days are spent mostly idly after school; I do my homework and try to memorize words and vowel associations, spend some time with my host family (usually chit-chatting or playing poker), or trying to get my host brothers to do something physical. On my second day here, they took me to play basketball with their friends. I was dehydrated, dealing with the higher elevation, and generally tired, so I had to check myself out after the first game (and couldn't make a shot to save my life), so they seem to think I'm some sort of invalid at this point. I'm eating well though, despite the fact that my exercise routine has declined to virtually nil; my host family is reluctant to let me go for a run by myself, and I am personally reluctant to go to the public gym in case someone gets angry at the big white guy for... well, for something or other. I suppose I'll have to get over that.

I do stick out like a sore thumb around here; Mongolia is diverse in its own way, but not in the way that an American would recognize -- many ethnicities living in a single country, but those ethnicities are all natively Mongolian. A black person walking down the street would be just as odd as a 6'0 blond American.

What else? The landscape is breathtaking, again in its own way: rolling hills covered in grass, most of it yellow or light green, though you can see darker green patches where the water collects and runs down the side of the hills. The country itself is well above sea level (though I have no idea of its exact elevation), Cattle, sheep, and goats are everywhere including on the city streets. Most people drive cars, but it is not uncommon to see a Mongolian man mounted on a horse ride through town. Khutul itself, the city I've been placed in for training, is not particularly large (about 10,000 people), and was built initially by the Soviets. If I've learned anything about Soviets during my time here thus far, it's that they have a certain fondness for concrete sculptures and central squares: the main park here has a wealth of animal sculptures that were made from concrete, and there is a block of five large apartment buildings that create a square in the middle of the city.

My mental state is good, overall. The bed in which I sleep is much harder than I'm used to, which turns out to be a good thing; the softer beds make my back hurt, for whatever reason. As a result, I'm sleeping pretty well each night. The terrifying Mongolian winter is still at least four or five months away; the weather has been mostly sunny and warm, though some days the wind kicks up with such ferocity that it puts Kansas and Chicago to shame. I'm told the winds are far worse in the Spring, though.

Honestly, the most difficulty I've had in maintaining a good balance mentally so far has been the initial orientation when we first got here. The leaders had a tendency to shush us to get our attention, which is infuriating to me; while I recognize the need to get everyone's attention, I cannot currently think of a more infuriating way to get us to quiet down. I'd rather be yelled at and even verbally insulted than shushed. Also, there were a lot of... "interactive" learning methods. I've just come from graduate school and, not to sound like a prat, I'm not used to teachers making us put together skits or asking endless questions that should be rhetorical, and most of the work I had done was not in groups or pairs. It just... it all seemed extremely childish. So that was frustrating. And some of my American counterparts do very little to counter the stereotype of Americans as being excessively loud, which was also a little irritating.

That section of our experience here seemed to drag on the longest; time is, as we all know, very malleable in the human experience. Perhaps consequently, my time since arriving in Khutul has been far more leisurely and has passed much more easily.

Bright ray of sunshine that I am, this is where I've decided to end this post. The overall impression should be that I quite like Mongolia and its people, am doing well emotionally (though I miss Emily something awful) and physically (though I could stand to exercise), and that things are coming along nicely. Did you get that?

June 24, 2015

This seems like a good time to write another blog post that I can't actually post.

My phone got jacked! It's my own fault, really; we had some access to the school's wifi (it comes and goes randomly), so I set my phone in what I thought was a fairly well-concealed place to download some music while I was in class. However, as you might have guessed, it was not as cleverly hidden as I'd thought, and someone grabbed it. Oh well! As you may already know, I broke my good phone long before I even left Kansas, and had bought a refurbished Galaxy Nexus to replace it. In Mongolia, I'm using what is essentially a Nokia brick phone (the indestructible model), issued by the Peace Corps. I didn't really need the thing, but it was my camera and my portable music player, so it was nice to have.

The weather here has become crazier. For a few days, it grew progressively hotter. This presented a problem of special significance, as we are expected to maintain business casual attire during any official Peace Corps functions. That means that, when walking to and from class, the sun is beating down on you while you wear your nice pants and a button-down. I probably smell(ed) like a yak.

Then, on Monday (June 22), a cold front moved in. There was some rain, though minimal. More impressive was the wind -- if it wasn't maintaining a wind speed of at least 45 mph, I'd be shocked. I truly thought it might rip the roof off of my host family's house. Since then, it's been getting warmer again from a starting point of probably 60-65 degrees. Fahrenheit. Obviously. If it's 60-65 degrees celcius, something has gone seriously wrong.

Language acquisition continues, but no longer at a snail's pace. We (all trainees) had a brief interview with the powers-that-be to make sure we were doing okay and were pretty close to par for the course, and my language teacher (baksh) had nice things to say about me in class. I'm to the point where the language is no longer totally foreign, apparently. We've begun learning tenses and adding more and more useful vocabulary (foods, jobs, numbers, etc.).

One bit of "constructive" feedback that I received during my interview (and which gave me a chuckle) was that I yawn a lot and seem very tired for the first part of class (from 9-10), and that I should therefore start going to bed earlier, say at 8 or 9. No, really. I'm not going to do that; for one thing, the sun doesn't actually set until 1030, and it doesn't get legitimately dark until probably an hour later. For another, it's actually 9 as I write this, and my host parents aren't even back from work yet. I live in a one-room house, and my room is separated from the kitchen by a sliding divider (if anyone from the Peace Corps is reading this, it locks and affords me decent privacy). Perhaps it will suffice to say that sound travels freely.

I get to visit Emily this weekend! Huzzah! She lives in Nomgon, a city about 15 minutes up the road by car.