The motions

September 22, 2015

Eric wrote this

Just a quick one, today. Been getting colder around here, and will drop into the negatives (celsius, which translates to the about the 20s F). The mountains, which had initially had snow on them from about two weeks ago but which had since melted, are again snow-capped, and this time with a lot more snow. I hate cold as much as I ever have, but the upshot is that the hot water came back on. In one of those moments of synchronicity that really keep life interesting for me, I've started re-reading the Lord of the Rings series, and came across this song (altered to be about beer in the movie – the extended version of the Fellowship GETONMYLEVEL) which perfectly matches my opinion on the subject:

       Sing hey! for the bath at close of day

that washes the weary mud away!

A loon is he that will not sing:

O! Water Hot is a noble thing!

O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,

and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;

but better than rain or rippling streams

is Water Hot that smokes and steams.

O! Water cold we may pour at need

down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;

but better is Beer if drink we lack,

and Water Hot poured down the back.

O! Water is fair that leaps on high

in a fountain white beneath the sky;

but never did fountain sound so sweet

as splashing Hot Water with my feet!

Teaching is going well, I think. The students seem to like us, though the teenagers are pretty typical teenagers, for the most part (i.e., too cool for school or too hormonal to participate). I've set up two classes outside of my regular hours, one for the English teachers to prepare for an aimag-wide and national English test/competition, and another for the non-English teachers to improve their English and, perhaps, compete in the same Olympiad. The non-english teachers' class varies in attendance, but I've had at least six in all three so far. Usually it's more; as the last post (which was devastatingly under-read, sniff-sniff-whine-whine) attempted to demonstrate, time and punctuality work differently in this country. I've also just posted notice for individual and group tutoring at my school; I posted it earlier this morning, and as of 4 pm have had seven students sign up. Not a bad start at a trade school, I warrant.

Ummmm other than that? I dunno. Emily's school bought her a full-length, winter deel (pronounced dell) today, which I am jealous of. I'll need a coat for this winter, as the one I have simply can't compete with -40 (which, if you forgot, is the same in C and F). Emily bought a bottle of cognac, which is the only liquor one can get here that is not vodka (or scotch, but who can afford that?). We're both getting over a bit of a head cold, too; Grace (me mah-in-lah) (mother-in-law) bought me some hankies before I came here, and I went through no fewer than eight of them on the worst day. (I then had to wash them by hand, compounding the misery.) It was gross. (So was washing them.)

I cooked dinner last night (and the night before, if grilled cheese counts). I'm unaccountably proud of that. 

Mongolian time and liquid integration

September 13, 2015
Written by Eric

It never feels like you've done that much around here, until you've already done it. Emily and I have a fair amount of downtime right now as we settle in to our communities and respective teaching roles, and yet at times it feels like there's never enough time in the day to get everything done. I suppose that's not so different from anything else in life, really.

So, what have we been doing, then? I'll start with today and move backward: Emily's cooking skills continue to amaze me, as she's currently making an apple coffee cake to take to one of our new friend's apartment. Again, we've been asked to be vague as to names and specific traits, but suffice it to say that this person is also not Mongolian, and is doing volunteer work. She's offering us very good coffee, and Emily wanted to return the favor. [Update: the cake was delicious, and I don't even like cooked apples.]

Earlier today, we went to the market and got hold of a few necessities, mostly food. I had thought that today was supposed to get up to 28 degrees Celsius (just about 80 degrees F), but that's clearly not the case, as it's currently jacket weather, cloudy, and windy.

We've been making good with my college lately, in a few ways. First, I'm finally full-on into this job, teaching classes and designing lesson plans with my counterparts. Second, we spent Friday and Saturday at Lake Kyrgyz, a lake which is about a two-hour drive from Ulaangom. This was an object lesson in several respects, the most relevant being the reality of Mongolian time. We were originally supposed to leave at 2 to go to the lake, but one of my CPs said we'd more likely leave at 3. Em and I showed up at 230, and sat around until about 330, at which time we got on a bus. We pulled out of the parking lot at about 4 and stopped at a gas station, after which we turned around and went back to the college, and about ten or twelve more Mongolians boarded the bus. About fifteen minutes later, we pulled away again only to stop at a store across the street, where we parked (with the engine running, heightening my anticipation) for another ten to fifteen minutes. At last, around 430, we were on our way.

We experienced the beginning of our third object-lesson on the bus, which Em and I decided to describe as “liquid integration”. You can decide what that means; I will neither explicitly confirm nor deny those suspicions. Liquid integration continued on a much grander scale once we reached the lake. 

A quick aside – I was expecting that we were going to go to the much-closer, largest-in-the-country Lake Uvs (or Uvs Nuur), but it was not so. The two-hour bus ride was, therefore, also a surprise. I was also expecting that we would be sleeping outside camping style, but this was also not the case. We stayed at a 'tourist lodge' which included a main building with a kitchen and several meals, three large lodging houses -- which my group completely filled -- and a few guest gers. Emily and I stayed in the gers. 

We were awake and partying with them up until about 11ish, then pooped out and went to bed. When I woke up three hours later at about 2 am, they were still going. Okay, not too bad, I thought. People like to party; 2 or 3 am seems reasonable to me. But when I woke up at 630 am and the music was still going, I was a little more surprised. The next morning, I asked one of my CPs how late she had been up. She told me she had gone to bed at about 7 am (and woke up at about 830) after dancing all night. Some of the men had apparently neither gone to sleep nor stopped partying. I don't mean to pass judgment on Mongolians with this; I just thought it was impressive. I haven't stayed up that late in... hell, have I ever? I don't think I have. I don't think I'd even want to.

Anyway, the next day was quite nice – sunny and breezy. We hiked up a nearby mountain into a small canyon where it was so quiet you could hear dirt shifting, chit-chatted with a lot of people in Monglish (exactly what it sounds like), and tried to catch up on missed sleep. After breakfast, our understanding of Mongolian time expanded further: we asked one particularly friendly guy -- whose name we did not get, somehow -- when we would leave. He said at about 2 o'clock, after lunch, which would be at 1. When lunch hadn't started at 2, I asked one of my CPs when we would leave, to which she responded, “After dinner, probably 8 or 9.” Okay, roll with it. Of course, we ate dinner at 530, and ended up leaving at about 7, 715.

The party continued on the bus trip back; we were on the bus with mostly older folks, which we thought would be more sedate. It was not to be, prompting Emily to observe that in Mongolia, every bus is a party bus. They either sang, danced, or sang and danced the entire trip back. It would have been fine with me, had one person not taken it upon themselves to do that shrill, fingers-in-your-mouth whistle every minute or so. Oh, and they also played “Gimme Gimme Gimme” by Abba. Points in the negative column.

The whole thing was fun, though; we were the only people around for miles and miles. Once we got out of the city, in fact, it was sort of like driving out of Las Vegas, but more stark. If you've never driven into Vegas, what I mean is this: you're in the desert, you're in the desert, you're in the desert, there's nothing around and then BAM! There's Vegas. For this, it was two hours of nothing but herds of animals and the occasional ger, then BAM! Ulaangom. The lodge we stayed at was stand-alone; there was a gas station nearby, but nothing else within sight, even from the top of the hills /mountains behind it.

Other than that, things have been going pretty well. The power and water was off in the morning thre days in a row. Don't know why. The weather has been getting steadily cooler, though, which means soonish we will have hot water. I am, perhaps, unreasonably excited about that. We haven't seen our American friends much this past week, unfortunately, but we plan on making up for that in the coming week.

Coming soon: a lake trip with Emily's school and the first nights below freezing with no he

Purple Fanta and the first day of school

September 2, 2015

Purple Fanta is the best Fanta.

Yesterday marked the first day of school here in Mongoland and, consequently, Em's and my first day of work. We'll be walking to our respective schools (about 15 minutes for both of us), which I thought would be fairly common among most students. It is indeed common, to a certain degree, but there were a lot lot lot more people driving their kids to school than I expected; harried parents hunched over the wheel with a scared-looking child sitting in the front seat. It made me chuckle quietly to myself every time I saw it. 

There are probably six or seven schools in this city (maybe more, I only know of secondary schools and the college at which I work), and all of them exhibited a similar scene: kitschy children's music blaring out of loud speakers in front of the school to welcome the students in/back, parents of new students milling about looking both relieved (to have some peace and quiet) and a little angry (probably about the music), men in suits (usually directors and subdirectors; more on this in a moment) shaking people's hands, and well-dressed women of all ages who far outnumbered the men. Emily's and my respective schools held opening ceremonies featuring dancers, singers, and a couple of speeches. My school even has a theme song. Walking around the city and seeing all of the kids in their uniforms and hearing the music from virtually everywhere was a surreal experience.

After the opening ceremony Emily, who was prepared for a long day stretching into the evening hours, was told she could go home, and that she would be contacted the following day, which threw her off. I (Eric) actually experienced something similar, in that once the ceremony was over I sat in the teacher's room to make myself available for consultation, but everyone was so busy that I was little more than a bump on a log. The two CPs I had already met and gotten friendly with, and who I had followed around all morning during the ceremony as they introduced me to every hand-shaking member of the staff, were in meetings. I eventually set up a time to meet with my CPs in the afternoon following classes, and went home myself. Emily got a call from one of her CPs asking her to come back in at about 130, and I headed back to my school at about 2. Those follow-up meetings were far more productive.

A quick aside here which I hope doesn't land me in hot water: Mongolia is one of the countries in the Peace Corps which has been selected to be a flagship for the Let Girls Learn initiative spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama. This at first struck me as odd, considering the educational participation levels in this country demonstrate vastly more women and girls than men and boys. Indeed, it might be better named “Keep Boys in School” in Mongolia; the young men quickly get fed up with school and often drop out to tend a herd, work in a technical job -- being a drive is a particularly lucrative career here, and actually tends to pay more than being a teacher, which is... bad -- or working as some sort of agricultural laborer.

Nonetheless, the positions of power in this country are still overwhelmingly occupied by men. I suppose it's not that different from the United States in many respects, yet one would think that, with women being far more educated, there would be afforded more opportunities to be in positions of authority. This is not, however, the case. This complicates the message of Let Girls Learn a little bit; sexism is an international phenomenon, and creating a project which seeks to change that reality in this country would be overshooting, to say the least. Encouraging boys to stay in school is obviously a worthy goal, yet without some sort of consciousness-raising effort, its success might provide more of a justification to continue or even further exclude women from positions of authority. Or is it rather the case that education is anathema to the various isms, including sexism? Or is that too idealistic? I believe in the power of education, but this is an extremely difficult, precarious balancing act, rooted in so many maybes and possiblies that it's hard to even see the beam one walks on.

I dunno. Just the thoughts running through our heads, lately. If I could say nothing else for my time in the Peace Corps (which I can but, for the sake of brevity, won't), I can definitively say that it has opened my eyes to the simple fact that human beings are significantly more diverse in perspectives and cultures than I realized. Some norms that I took for granted as being universal having lived in a developed, Western, powerful, and diverse country simply aren't realities elsewhere, or even topics of conversation or debate.

Sigh. It feels kind of lame to end on that note, but it would feel lamer to go back to describing the rest of the week. I'll try anyway: we went to a birthday party for one of our fellow PCVs in her ger over the weekend, which was fun. She fed us pizza with basil leaves baked into the crust, and made crepes which we were able to slather with a French concoction called chestnut butter, which was tasty. We've established a weekly meeting with our CPs and other community members called “Monglish night”, the first instance of which happened at a nearby restaurant but will, this week, take place at our apartment (too expensive otherwise). We've been back to that sweet market I described, too. We met an emee (grandmother) working one of the vegetable stands who, when we first walked up, gave us an enthusiastic hello and offered us that traditional Mongolian vodka made from yogurt I described in an earlier post. She chatted amicably with us like you would expect any “I don't give a fuck” grandma to do (helped in her banter by what I assume was her daughter, a woman in her 40s), and gave us five or six free carrots after we bought two kilos of veggies. She was one of the first people in the whole market who did not immediately assume that we were Russian and attempt to speak to us in that same language, which I liked. We've made good friends with another of our colleagues who lives close enough that we could string a line between our two balconies in two apartment blocks, and made dinner with her a few times – burritos one night, pizza another, and cookies and cakes and whatnot. We get together every Saturday for board games and a few drinks, which is fun.

Only ten of you read my last post. Shame.