Thursday, October 22, 2015

WHOA WHOA WHOA

October 22, 2015

So much to say (no, that has nothing to do with DMB, Katie), so little time. Or, no, wait. Lots of time.

It's been a sort of rough couple of weeks since I last wrote a real entry (I wrote a... another entry that is more like a journal entry, if anyone wants to read it). Not bad, really, just not smooth. At all. In any case, I'd like to begin with a quick thank you to a friend for reaching out to me, and with good advice. I don't want to name you by name because that'd be kind of like...singling you out, and no one likes that.

Least of all students, I've come to learn. Some of you saw my post on facebook about this, but it bears repeating: I was teaching a new class that had specifically requested my presence in their classroom this past Monday. We had a decent lesson; the students were a little bit timid, but that's mostly because they were trying to get used to my style, I think, which is very different from a typical Mongolian teacher. I was, admittedly, already in a sour sort of mood, having slept very poorly the night before. But when the end of the class rolled around, and my CP and I handed out a test to the students, it got worse. Two students turned in a blank sheet of paper with their names on it, and at least three of the six that I actually got to grade before class ended got lower than 50%. Discouraging, to say the least.

What with me being me, I allowed that to set the tone of the next two days. Things became bitterer in my mind, and I sort of phoned it in on Tuesday, to my shame, and ended up receding into my head that night and being all moody. Poor Emily. Wednesday started out pretty poorly, but thanks to the unending patience of my exquisite wife and the aforementioned good advice from a friend, it turned around before the evening.

Which is good, because we had a dinner with the American consulate that night. Surprisingly loose and good-natured, the two Americans and two Mongolians joined us at a nearby restaurant. For the occasion, the city had set up a bit of a cultural show, including two seriously talented singers (first female then male), two undoubtedly gifted dancers (same mix), and one virtuoso morin khuur player. The first singer was accompanied by the morin khuur player (a sort of cello-like instrument with two strings – here's a link of a dude playing the morin khuur while also throat singing, which is equally cool but did not happen during dinner), and sang an extremely evocative piece that ranged from shrill, almost shrieking highs (though not unpleasant) to sultry lows. I couldn't find an example of that, but her voice... I can think of two general parallels: the Pink Floyd song, "The Great Gig in the Sky" but more controlled, or the music from Gladiator with the undulating female vocalist. 

The dancers mimed (in rhythm) the kind of pastoral lifestyle that is rapidly being left behind in this country – lassoing a horse, shooting arrows, completing the necessary tasks for survival. All Mongolian dancing, I have learned, channels the rhythm of riding a horse at a gallop, a sort of quick but controlled back and forth that they tend to embody with their shoulders. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but one thing in particular caught my eye: the stage was very small, and as a result only one dancer could fit on it. (Don't picture a theatre stage, but rather something you might see at a wedding – a platform raised maybe an inch or two off of the ground and set apart solely for its own sake). The female was thus relegated to the regular floor, which was marble, and difficult to gain any traction on. She had to constantly readjust her foot as she attempted to sway in time with the music and keep her stance, which was low and bent at the knee. To her credit, though, she didn't slip once, and the performance was quite excellent.

I can't say much else about the morin khuur player except to emphasize his tremendous talent. In the video above, I suggest watching the placement of the player's fingers, and how they eke the different sounds out of an instrument that has no frets and two strings. [A quick note on the "kh" -- it's actually more of a "huuh" sound, like the H in the word "him", but with a sort of guttural accompaniment. In the Cyrillic alphabet, forced on the Mongolians by the occupying Soviets starting in about 1921, it's represented by an X. kkkhhhhuh.]

This whole experience was a welcome relief from a somewhat comically unfortunate week (actually almost two weeks back, now that I think of it). First, our electricity went off for about eight hours on Sunday. At first, Em and I figured it was just for maintenance, or something; it happens fairly often around here. My first hint that this was not something normal came when I went to turn on the water, which usually goes off at the same time, and noticed it was still on and still hot. My second hint to abnormality came in the evening, when I looked across the street and saw that the lights were on in the opposite apartment building, then walked outside and discovered that our apartment was among very few dark ones. About half an hour later, Em and I learned that one of our school's accountants had neglected to pay our electricity bill, and the company had, perhaps understandably, cut us off.

An unfortunate position to be in to be sure, but not terrible. Our gracious neighbor and fellow PCV Amy allowed us to come over to her apartment and make a simple meal of rice and beans, and by the time we got back to the apartment, Emily's CP who knows a guy who works in the power plant had managed to get our power turned back on. So, no harm no foul, really.
The next day, some electricians from my school came to fix some undeniably jankey wiring in our apartment, which was cool. Electricity was on and everything.

But – there's always a but – the next day at about 1130, the power went off again. This time, we immediately contacted the offending school and implored them to pay the bill. They did not do this, evidently, until about 130 the next day.

I don't want to dwell on this for too long because, again, it wasn't that bad, and Amy let us come to her place again for food. We had enchiladas, which was definitely an effective consolation. But that is not to say that we were not seriously annoyed. We actually had to shut off the heat (radiator) in the kitchen and open the window to make sure our food didn't spoil in the refrigerator (it's been in the 20-40 degrees Fahrenheit range for about two weeks now). I actually had a moment before we went to Amy's where I recognized the surreality of the situation, though: I was sitting in the hallway drinking cognac (because it's either cognac, vodka, or beer) in the hallway of a Soviet-style apartment in Mongolia with Emily -- to take the edge off -- while wearing a headlamp to see because our school's accountants had forgotten to pay our bill. How do you make that up? You don't. You just don't. 

In the end, I suppose there's no use crying over spilled milk. Evidently, the bill has been paid, and we have seen no problem since.


There's this whole story about meeting a French girl, a German dude, an Australian girl, and a New Zealand dude (how do you say that? New Zealander? Emily insists on saying “Kiwi” which I'm sure is somehow racist), not to mention our existing Korean girl friend and getting drunk with the lot of them in the German dude's apartment, but who wants to hear about that?


My music recommendation this week: Kendrick Lamar. Anything. If you haven't heard his music yet, shame on you. Start with “King Kunta” if you haven't heard any of his music. And I'd recommend this to anyone who is a fan of music in a general sense. It's somewhere between funk and hip hop and rap, music that only this man is making. 

Thanks for reading. 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Posts for Posterity

October 14, 2015

This entry is less about what's happening with Em and I and more about things that I've been thinking about; more like a journal entry, exactly the kind of thing people don't like about blogs. Just a... just a little heads up. 

There are many things that I don't know about my time here thus far, or the time to come over the next 22 months. What I do know is that I will be a different person when it's over.

Granted, that doesn't mean much. We're all different people from one moment to the next, really. (Emily and I had an extensive debate about this that I won't recount here but which I thoroughly enjoyed.) I know people who claim they've had a sandwich or a particularly tasty bowl of macaroni and cheese that changed their lives.

The question here, though, is in what way I will change. What kind of person will I be when this is all over? For example, I think I have a decent handle on the kind of person I am right now – I tend to notice negative things before I notice positive things. But after a while, all of those negative things start to converge, especially when you're thinking about people. How many different ways can you complete the following sentences (you don't have to believe it)? ______ are terrible drivers. ______ are always late. ______ eat weird food. _____ love to drink _____. _______ are selfish. _____ are arrogant. ______ are stupid. ______ are crazy.

The blanks can be filled with dozens if not hundreds of different responses. Obviously you don't need to believe the things that you put in there; I think the point is that someone believes that. Maybe more to the point, several someones or groups of someones believe that.

Asians are terrible drivers. French people are always late. Rich people love to drink brandy. Men are selfish. Atheists are arrogant. Republicans are stupid. Women are crazy.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this; even as I write these things out, they seem self-evident. And maybe, intellectually, they are and always have been to me. But now, the truth of this is so much clearer than it ever has been that I don't know how to process it. We humans love to simplify; it makes a chaotic, indifferent universe seem like it has a rhyme and a reason. I had to know these stereotypes to create the responses, right? I had to, on some level, believe them – why else would I pick them? Women are terrible drivers. Italians are terrible drivers. People from Florida are terrible drivers. Why did I go with Asians? I don't know.

I'm worried that my cynical attitude, no matter the balancing that Emily's relentless positivity provides, is going to explode into some sort of full-blown neurosis that leads me to become a super-villain, or something. I've already begun to accept that climate change is going to happen because we're too short-sighted to do anything about it. Part of me even sees it as a good thing; humanity's cauldron must – and will inevitably – be stirred every so often.

Good God. I tried to avoid exactly this kind of post, but I can't help it. I just won't publicize this one. If you made it through, I salute you.


Let me know what you think. 

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Dust storms and other mundane things

October 6, 2015

Despite my incessant whining, very few people read this blog; confusingly, the number of readers has dropped by about half. As such, I have decided to back off the “every week” thing. Besides, if I stuck to that schedule, there wouldn't be enough time to distance myself from things that make me angry (like students not studying or doing their effing homework), or annoyed  (like how every single child under 12 in this city only knows how to say "Hi", and does so when they see me over and over and over and over). This has been an overwhelmingly positive experience thus far, and it wouldn't be fair to characterize it differently just because I was having a bad day when it was time to write a blog post.

We'll start this week with weather: it's been in the 60s and 70s for the better part of a week, up from the much chillier 20s I mentioned in the last post. Today, however, saw a high in the upper 40s, with a low back down in the 20s. Yesterday we had a massive dust storm that lasted literally all day -- it was like a day-long rainstorm, but with much stronger wind, a brown sky instead of gray, caking of dust all over you instead of rain, and a constant stinging in your eyes. I've never experienced anything remotely like this – even the dust storms at my (and Emily's) training site(s) didn't last for longer than an hour, tops. This one started at night while we were sleeping, when high winds slammed open the large, metal door to the stairwell outside of our apartment, then shut, then open, then shut, then open again ad nauseam. It continued on through the night and as I walked to school, then died down just long enough for me to walk home in relatively clear air. Not fifteen minutes after I got inside and sat down, it started up again with a vengeance. The sun illuminating all of those floating dust particles turns the sky an eerie shade of orange, like Breaking Bad's sepia-toned vision of Mexico. (We took some pictures early in the day that are posted to Emily's Facebook wall.)

Yesterday also marked the first site visit from one of the Peace Corps higher-ups. He came over for dinner with his driver (while the dust storm continued to rage). We made homemade nachos (the whole thing, including the chips) and tsuivan, a traditional Mongolian dish. I saw “we”; I rolled out the dough that became the noodles for the tsuivan, but everything else was Emily and two of our site mates. That higher-up visited with our counterparts and watched us teach classes today, then headed on to the next site. I don't envy his schedule, traveling from aimag to aimag and meeting with as many people as he's had to meet with, all in the span of about... I think two weeks. Maybe less, definitely not more.

We've had a few maintenance problems lately, including a busted O-ring on the faucet in the bathtub. The fixture itself was a piece of garbage to begin with, so it was replaced entirely. The process took about four hours and a total of six Mongolians. The reason for that, I think, was that none of them were actually plumbers, just some handy dudes the landlord knew who said they could do it. Things broke, things got dirty, and water was sprayed everywhere, but in the end, they installed it perfectly, and everything works quite well now. I'm still frustrated that they only seem able to fix one thing at a time, but hey. Baby steps are still steps.

This past weekend, we celebrated International Teacher's Day (it was actually October 5, not the 1st, which Christina quite correctly referred to as International Ballet Day). On Friday, Emily went with her school to Uvs Nuur, the largest lake in the country, and I went with one of our other site mates to a celebration of how awesome we all are (teachers) at a nightclub. So far as I can tell, it's the only bonafide nightclub in the city. Then again, I haven't actually looked, as night clubs aren't really my thing. Also: Emily told of at least six fights between drunk Mongolian men. If they're drunk enough to fight each other, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched to think that they might take my resting bitch face and lack of understanding as some kind of sleight, and try to fight me as well. Even if I could take one drunk dude, it's safe to say that I could not take one and five of his potentially-sober friends.

As I mentioned in the last post (I think), I attempted to start a tutoring program for students interested in learning extra English. Every slot I offered was filled up by the time it started, but by the third day, only two students had actually shown up. That was, as you might imagine, frustrating, so I canceled the rest. Apparently the mistake I made was to schedule the tutoring later in the day (sessions from 4-6, usually). I've decided to focus my attention on clubs and community work, instead. 

Oh, yes: we've gotten reliable access to the local sports complex, including a fairly well-appointed workout room. This has been a lifesaver for me; depression was starting to creep back in, and for me exercise helps to expunge that insanely well. It also helps to deal with the seemingly constant stream of afflictions I've been going through, including a sinus infection on first arriving in Mongolia, a weeks-long bout of irritable bowel syndrome, an incredibly painful and acute bout of gastro-intestinal issues, another sinus infection or cold (not sure which), and an allergic reaction that makes my hands incredibly itchy. Bleh.

All in all, aside from constant disease, slacker teenager students, and perilous dust storms, things are going pretty well. Meditation helps.


Lastly: anyone who likes folky rock music (Chris, Jaron, Matt, Alex), give The Paper Kites a try. I recommend starting with “A Lesson from Mr. Gray.”