“When I drink water, it comes out of my ears”, and other stories

December 20, 2015: “When I drink water, it comes out of my ears”, and other stories

Happy birthday, brother. You're so old that archaeologists are starting to become interested.

Another long delay. These things happen.

"These things happen." I feel like that would be an ideal phrase for any PCV in Mongolia (and, probably, anywhere else). Take the title of this post, for instance. I don't mean to convey the image of a river (or even a trickle) of water running down the side of my face. It's more a leaking feeling, really, and I can only tell that it's water when I wiggle my finger around in there. But still, that thing sometimes happens.

Also, on my walk to... well, anywhere, my breath freezes in my mustache. It's kind of charming, in its own way. We've hit “steam coming off of my pee” cold, as one of my colleagues would put it. This is also the type in which your breath is not so much “able to be seen” as it is “you can't see behind it.”

Okay, so. Let me read back over the previous entry and see where we left off.

Yes. Quite. Indeed. Oh! Good fun, Eric, good fun.

I haven't seen a snowglowbow since the first, but some other things have happened. I'll try and work my way forward: the sports competition was a complete dud, mostly because I suck at volleyball and my feelings are, at times, easily hurt. For example, after I've been standing in a gym for two hours with no one to talk to and replaced on the team by a 50-year-old dude in blue jeans. Woe is me.

The week after that was better. My CPs and I are getting along better and better as time goes by. Part of this is, I think, that a cafeteria has opened up in my school which serves honest-to-god coffee, not the instant coffee mix commonly served here, which is at least 65% sugar and dried milk. They also make really good pastries and lunchy dishes, so I try to spend more time in there when I'm not teaching or advising. See and be seen, as they say. Much else was blessedly uneventful, though the power was turned off again due to entirely foreseeable and controllable -- though not by us -- circumstances. It came back on, though, so no harm done, really. Just frustrating.

Other than that, things were mostly routine: school, clubs, advising, teaching at the library, reading and watching the Walking Dead, things like that. My Kindle died somewhere in there because I foolishly thought the inside pocket of my jacket would keep it close enough to my body to keep it just warm enough to not freeze the screen. Alas, alas, alas! I swear: if my external hard drive bites it, I might be coming home. I know that'd be a terrible reason to stop service, but that's the entirety of my entertainment now. My laptop's HD is tiny, so the external is holding all of my music, tv shows, and movies. I've backed up my music on the cloud, which is good, but the rest of it is too much to do anything with. 

Harrumph.

Moving along: the most eventful thing in the past month has been In-Service Training, or IST. IST was a week-long training scheduled for us PCVs and one of our CPs, and it took place in UB (Ulaanbaator). For this, I chose a good friend who used to be a Russian teacher, but who is now looking to become a better English teacher – the school stopped offering Russian and went to English only. We get along well, she's about my age, has three adorable kids, and had never been to this kind of thing before. We worked together throughout sometimes-tedious (sorry Peace Corps) and sometimes-useful training, and ended up getting a lot out of it. New techniques to teach different skills related to speaking, listening, writing, and reading English. A key problem here thus far has been, as you might expect if you've ever taught, motivating students to learn, participate, do their homework, and study. 

I work at a technical school, so the students are mostly interested in learning about their particular craft, and not so much in learning English. Many are set in the notion that this is what they will do for the rest of their lives, be it carpentry or boot-making, and it's frankly difficult for me to argue otherwise. This has been a particularly tall hurdle to jump in advising -- if they want to work with international companies, suppliers, or foreigners in any capacity, then yes, English is essential. If they don't? It's like trying to convince high-school me (or present-day me) that I need to learn geometry. Why? I'm not good at it, I don't like it, and I'll never work in a field that requires it. That it expands the mind's horizons could be said of pretty much anything.

That said, IST provided me with a lot of tools to keep those less-interested students engaged and learning (against their will), while simultaneously providing the more eager students outlets to get better. As far as homework, well... that remains a tough nut to crack, but hey. I'm here to help, not grade.

The training itself took place in a very nice hotel, which provided the opportunity and impetus for us PCVs to hang out, reconnect, and behave stupidly at night. It was a lot of fun, to say the least. Emily had gone in a few days beforehand for some extra training for the regional subwardens, or safety officers. Wondering what I did while she was gone? I read and watched the Walking Dead. That's what.

On an unrelated note: I found a beard hair hiding in my sideburns that was as long as my ring finger. It was awesome. On a now-related note, Emily and I bought a wedding ring for me that I can actually wear. It was 80,000 tugruks, which is about $40, is a gold composite, and is very thin. I like it because it fits, doesn't hurt my hand, and matches Emily's mom's ring (me mah-in-lah), which is also gold. I'm terrified it's going to break, but it has not as of yet turned my hand green.

What else? I tried to bring two containers of contact solution and a bottle of Tabasco on a plane, which was stupid. In my defense, we left at 620 am, which meant getting up at 4 am. Our electricity was off for what I judged to be about five days while we were gone, which made a mess of our refrigerator and left me furious, but it's back on now. The internet is not on, however, a problem we will be taking care of tomorrow (the 21^st). (Remember when the world was going to end three years ago? Good times.) The second quarter of classes is drawing to a close, which means two things: one, that I'll be far less busy, and two, that it's going to start getting bitterly cold. It's currently -28 C, and set to continue a downward trend. I've never seen temperatures this cold in person, but I'm still not impressed. When it hits -40 C, which is also -40 F, I'll be impressed. Mostly with myself, but still. The days are insanely short; the sun rises some time around 9 and sets no later than 430. Tomorrow will, at least, be the solstice, so days will start getting longer again. I wasn't able to get a phone in UB, unfortunately, but I've still got my fingers crossed for a missing package to show up.

This is getting long. I'll cut it off here. Emily and I miss you all, and wish you a very happy holichrisannukwanzewyear. Or just, you know, holidays.