“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.  

The Sunsnow Glowbow

November 26, 2015

Apologies for the delay since the last post; I hate to keep my adoring fan waiting needlessly.

Which is okay, because this wait was not needless. The first quarter of the school year ended, and my life became far, far busier. Classes, clubs, housework, social engagements, more classes at the library, more clubs at the library… I hate to whine so publicly, but hey. I did.

What? The title? Yes, well, that’s the term I have coined for a natural phenomenon which I have only seen here in Mongolia. It happens when the sun shines amid minimal cloud cover, which too recently has covered the entire sky, dumping snow on our fair city. Though snow no longer falls, the moisture in the remaining in the air freezes, causing tiny ice particles to form, falling to the ground. You can't even see them unless they're caught in a sun beam, much like a mote of dust hovering lazily in the light of a window. But when you could see the floating ice, the air itself seems to sparkle, as if someone has thrown glitter from a passing plane. Add to that the barest glimpse of a rainbow behind the clouds, and you get a Sunsnow Glowbow.

Mongolia is a strange, strange place. Another example: it’s been snowing quite a lot recently. There was a stretch of about a week where it snowed all day every day (and most of the night). It was essentially a constant flurry, so accumulations are still barely more than ankle high in most places, but I can’t even imagine the shitshow this would cause in the states, especially where I come from, when combined with the below-0 temperatures. Mongolians just take it in stride. Literally – I've seen kids sprinting at full speed across sheets of ice that I can barely get over safely with a granny-shuffle.

What's more, there are no snow plows here, so cars just continually drive over the snow, packing it down into a thick layer of ice all over the road. It’s much the same on the sidewalks; eventually, it will be too cold to drive a car, so people do a lot of walking. Obviously, that much ice is not tremendously safe, so the city devised a simple way of dealing with it. Each institution is responsible for clearing the snow and ice in front of their establishment, out into the road. People show up with shovels, hoes, picks – I even saw one guy using a discarded wooden sign – and they clear the street and sidewalks, inch by inch.

Of course, then it snows again, and the roads freeze again, but at least the ice is only an inch thick instead of two or three, right? I will say this for the whole thing, though: it makes walking/sliding home a lot more interesting. One must choose one's path and speed very carefully.

Shifting gears a bit as we move on to some other things: today (Friday) is a sports day at my school, with teachers competing against teachers. I'm on a team with at least ten others, one of whom is a dude who is famous in this aimag for being a mountain climber, another of whom is the tallest dude in my school (even taller than me, though just barely), and another of whom is my four-foot-something counterpart. I've been asked to play in the volleyball and basketball events. I like our chances. More on this story as it unfolds.

As of the time I'm writing this, it's Thanksgiving at home. Dinner would have finished a while ago, and people would be staggering home (NOT DRIVING DRUNK, RIGHT?). We here in Uvs province celebrated last weekend, as that was the only time our fellow PCVs could travel in from their soums and, as you might imagine, Mongolia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. You may have seen the picture on Facebook; Emily, Amy, and the two aforementioned out-of-towner PCVs made a hell of a meal – roasted chicken, garlic and herb mashed potatoes, scalloped cheesy potatoes, honey-braised baked carrots, homemade wholewheat rolls, gravy, cake, snickerdoodles, and beets. It was an absolutely delectable meal. (That list might seem to suggest that beets were considered a dessert, but that's not the case. I just don't like beets very much, so they came last.)

I assisted by doing some prep, but wasn't much help otherwise until cleanup began. Later in the evening, the vodka came out, and we attempted to drunk history Thanksgiving, which was fun. I haven't seen the final product of that, but I imagine it will be just as much of a circus as I remember it being.

Umm... not too much else to report. Emily and I have started teaching at the library, I've started doing a “movie club” at the school with Raiders of the Lost Ark, we'll be heading out to UB for some training in about a week and a half (two weeks for me), we're learning Korean, and I plan to start learning German soon, and um... that's about it. Thanks for reading.

I reiterate my recommendation to listen to Sufjan Steven's most recent album “Carrie and Lowell” – it's kind of incredible how he can mix the sweetest melodies and instruments with the most heart-wrenching lyrics, though some of the songs he's written are the definition of melancholy (the Fourth of July, for example). Instead of asking you to wallow in the misery, this album helps put your life into perspective. For me, at least right now, things are simple and uncomplicated, blissful and wondrous. For the most part, you can choose your happiness. There may come a day when the sadness overwhelms, but today isn't that day. As always, I recommend a set of headphones.  

The breathtaking, the mundane, and the breathtakingly mundane

November 11, 2015

Okay, so. Yes. Mongolia.

Fallout 4 came out yesterday, and I can't play it. It's probably for the best; I'd want to play it immediately, before any of the patches and bug fixes came out. When they initially released Fallout: New Vegas back in... I think 2010, it had so many bugs and glitches that it was basically unplayable for a while. It made a lot of people mad. I doubt they'll make the same mistake with this new title, but hey. I'm a bright-side kind of guy.

But Mongolia! It's cold here. Single-digits cold, and it is, as you might have noticed, not even mid-November yet. It has also snowed three times now. None of the snowfall would qualify as a lot, but it was enough to cover the ground in about two or three inches. The second and third snows were basically just flurries that lasted for most of the day; if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't see it. That kind of snow.

The snow, specifically, had an interesting side-effect – I was able to start noticing paths that I hadn't known about before, due to foot traffic. There isn't much grass in Mongolia, so people just kind of walk anywhere they can to get where they're going, and trails don't really form until there's some way of knowing where people were. Snow provides that visual cue, and people have begun taking these specific paths.

One such path I discovered takes me a different way to and from my school, which is nice. Instead of traveling along the paved roads, I dive into what could only be described as the “ger suburbs” by way of a narrow path between two hashaa fences. Most gers are situtated in a fenced in area called a hashaa where they can dig an outhouse, store fuel for the winter, take care of the various minutiae of life that can't be accomplished in a ger, park a car if they have it, and keep a few animals to slaughter for food. These hashaas tend to be lined up next to each other (like a typical suburb, the key difference being their location within the city), sharing a fence for maybe two or three hashaas until they run into a street, usually made of dirt and stone.

Anyway, as I mentioned, one of the paths leads between a series of fences in between hashaas so narrow that, at one point, you have to lean one way or the other to avoid scraping up against the fences. It's kind of surreal; it makes you feel a little claustrophobic given how wide open the steppe is otherwise. I mean, seriously: the closest impediment to my normal view of the lands around the city are mountains which are at least three or four miles away, and that's only on one side. If my very old compass and my poor sense of direction can be trusted, they're away to the south and southwest. (Quick side note – occasionally, when the weather gets bad, low-hanging clouds completely shroud the mountains from view. Not even the foothills are visible; just a wall of gray or, in the case of a dust storm, brown.) Otherwise? Open steppe for as far as I can see.

So, when you're walking in between two fences so close that you have to lean this way and that like Michael Jackson in the “Smooth Criminal” music video, it feels claustrophobic. But when the fence suddenly ends and there aren't any buildings to obstruct your view, you are suddenly assaulted by the openness, the vastness. It feels like going outside after having been sick and bed-ridden for a week, but it feels this way every time I walk past it (not quite every day; I try to vary my routes).

Mongolia has its challenges, but these kind of awesomely commonplace things make it worth it.

In other news, Emily and I are now extremely busy. The first quarter of the year has passed and the second quarter has begun, and my schedule is now packed with nine classes (each 80 minutes), five sessions of office hours and advising (another 80 minutes each, but it's been great to get to work with students one-on-one), seven clubs (typically an hour each), two sessions of lesson planning each week, a shift teaching at the new language library which our Korean volunteer friend Grace just opened on Monday, a session learning Korean, and the odd tutoring lesson. They tell me this will only last until January, when a good portion of the third-year students will graduate (they go for 2.5 years). Then it'll be dull again.

Which is fine with me. I also agreed to serve as one of the National Coordinators for the “Write-On” creative writing contest here in Mongoland. And I just turned 29, so I need my rest. We had a good ol' fashioned good time for my birthday, iffen yer wonderin'.,

The electricity just went off (as I was writing this). Let's see how long it takes to come back on.

In the meantime, I have attended two official “opening ceremonies” for two projects undertaken by my Korean volunteer friends. One was the aforementioned language library, which I encourage you to “Like” on Facebook (Uvs Foreign Language Learning). The other was the unveiling of some new and frankly incredible kitchen equipment for the bakery students at my college (it's a technical college, remember). This included several huge standing mixers, a large stacked oven, several stainless steel tables, aprons and hats for the students (bright orange, mind you), serving platters, new refrigerators and, the thing I'm most excited about, an espresso machine. An effing espresso machine! I've been lamenting the lack of a coffee shop basically since we got here, and now there'll basically be one in my school that I can go to any time. I am, perhaps, unduly excited by this.

What else? I dunno. Electricity's still out, but it's only been five minutes. There's been a fair amount of utility work done recently; maybe that's it. I refuse to believe that the schools didn't pay out electric bill again. No, okay, I just looked: the traffic lights are out. Phew. [Thanks again for the binoculars, Natalie.]

Electricty is back. Huzzah! Only ten minutes this time. A good reason to post, I think.

Happiness

Written by Emily

Dear family, friends, and others,

I want to talk about happiness today. This is my first blog post so I might ramble, forgive me, but I am just so full of happiness that I can barely contain it. This is actually an interesting turn of events because for the past few weeks Eric and I were both feeling a little bit down. He wrote about it in his previous post. Things were feeling hard at school, we had electricity issues, and it was getting colder. For me, the past few days have really turned everything around, and that’s what I want to share with everyone.

There is something The Disillusionment Phase that says most first year teachers burn out or have a crisis around October or November. I see how it can easily happen to any teacher, no matter how “good” they are. I think this type of person focuses so much on what is right in front of them that they can’t see the bigger picture. My bigger picture happened on Friday night at my school’s Halloween party.
I've been working in this (relatively) new advisor position, and it's been a challenge -- hopefully I'll get to write more about that next time. But in one of my advising sessions, the student and I got to talking about Halloween. The next natural step seemed like hosting a party, in this case at my school's dormitory. 

SO: first off, we had a whole week’s worth of English events that were planned by one of the 12^th grade classes. These kids are seriously amazing. They made up games, wrote trivia questions, printed certificates for the winners, and decorated the auditorium, plus so many other things I didn’t even see. All I had to do was show up for the events and say what they told me to say. I’ve never seen this level of dedication in the American school system and I was so impressed. And it wasn’t only one class getting into it! At every event we had a large group of students show up, and at the Halloween party every student wore a costume or painted their face really scary. On Friday we played games at the party and we had too many volunteers each time. I feel like this week sold me on how important it is to work as a group. An individual student nor I by myself could never have accomplished all that we did as a group. I’ll remember this success for a long time, and it will help me the next time I get down about something.

I was really happy at the party and that leaked over into everything else. Along with my fellow PCVs and KOICA volunteers, we have 3 really good projects planned that will come to fruition within the next few months that (hopefully) will make a big impact on the community. I was able to find some nice secondhand boots for a good price. At the market our favorite fruit lady gave us a free apple each. Our German friend invited us over to his apartment last night and we played games. My cilantro is doing well and my water plant has a beautiful pink flower on it. The snow covering the mountains near us is absolutely gorgeous. I ate lunch and spoke Mongolian with the school secretary and we pretty much understood each other. My school has a week break from classes in order to plan for next quarter, so I don’t have to teach at all this week. Yoga class yesterday was great. I just learned that boxing is pretty popular here so I will try to find a class I can attend. There are super cute cats that live under and around our building that we are trying to make friends with. I have the time to learn about the stuff I didn’t have time to learn in college and grad school. I’ve been looking at rental houses in SE Asia for next summer and there are some mind-blowingly amazing options. We can and do talk to our families and friends whenever we want.

There are too many things to be happy about! Sure, there are still plenty of small things we could worry about, but what is the point in that? What I want to say to everyone is: why would you ever choose to focus on the bad when the world is so incredibly full of good things?

I am living my dream, even with the bad things. Eric is amazing enough to live it with me. How many people can say they are truly living their dream right now? I think not so many. And it is hard work and sometimes frustrating or lonely, but no one ever said it would be easy to live a dream. I think it should be hard so you will appreciate it that much more. I know I am an overly optimistic person, but it is such an amazing feeling to be nearly overwhelmed with happiness on a daily basis that I want to share it with everyone so maybe I can help someone else feel it too.

Here’s to another wonderful day in beautiful Mongolia!  

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. 

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. 

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 1^st, 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.”

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. 

Regularity

August 22, 2015 [Eric wrote this one.]

I will attempt to compose entries on a more regular basis (i.e., weekly) now that we have consistent interwebs access. This one I wrote the other day, but not much has changed since then. Emily may also write a few entries from her perspective, which we'll post here. 

Also: Alex Rymarquis sucks eggs. He teaches other people how to suck eggs. His favorite thing to do is to suck eggs. 

Okay. So. We're in Uvs, now. We've been instructed to be as vague as possible as to our actual location (i.e., the city) in very public forums, so we won't mention that on the blog posts, but we're in a city in Uvs. It turns out we were informed correctly about the natural beauty. The mountains are my favorite part, so far; the light falls on the different faces and leaves others in shadow, putting the immensity of the things in a perspective that only the Sun can. It seems like this place hasn't seen much rain lately, though, as the ground is more yellow and brown than green, and the vegetation consists largely of random tufts of grass growing here and there amid low-lying shrubs and bushes. Trees are a rarity, which crushes my soul a little bit, but it's not unexpected.

Thus far, Emily and I have spent most of the time settling in. Our apartment is enormous, maybe even larger than the one we had in Lawrence. Size is not everything however, as we all know; water is heated by gas in this aimag, and the gas doesn't come on until Winter, which begins in October. So, while we do have running water, its temperatures are cold and you-might-lose-your-hand-to-frostbite cold. Also, and I don't know if this is a coincidence or predictable, but half of the apartment doesn't have lights. Not electricity, mind you, but lights, and lamps don't seem to exist here. As I write, for example, I'm sitting in darkness staring at the light bulb that is my computer screen. I've actually changed the background on the document I'm writing in to black so that my retinas don't get completely destroyed. Oh, and the toilet is in its own room which can only be described as broom-closet sized. The other day we woke up with no electricity or running water. Small inconveniences even when compared to the service of others in the Peace Corps, or even in Mongolia. I have to admit that, when the water goes out, I miss the hole-in-the-ground jorlon (outhouse) that I had become used to during training.

But hey, we have internet. Perhaps predictably, the first day we had internet access was spent almost entirely dicking around online. Today, though, we made lunch with two of our site mates after heading to a large market area to buy some necessities. This also included a rousing game of Catan which I was, as ever, one turn from winning.

The market has been one of my favorite things about this city (and Mongolia in general) so far. It's difficult to describe, but here goes: you walk in on a road that leads to a small parking area that would be equivalent to about ten parking spaces wide and maybe fifty spaces long. I don't mean to give the idea that there is any order here at all, though; there are cars parked all over the place, but it's highly random -- one horizontal, one jagged like a hastily ripped piece of cardboard. The outer limits on this parking lot are one-story shop buildings, most of which are crammed to the roof with whatever kinds of things that particular vendor is selling; clothes, appliances, cutlery, plates/cups/bowls, car parts, tools, flooring, fabrics, shoes, and other this-and-thats.

At the end of the parking lot, one dives into the heart of this place, row upon row of these one-story buildings, all similarly crammed with different things. There is a certain kind of order to the place, though; there's a section dedicated entirely to selling food, which evokes the stereotypical image of a tall white guy wandering among stalls selling fruits and vegetables – right now, it's potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions and, if you're lucky, tomatoes, apples, and garlic – while tarps and fabrics hang over head to keep out the rain and, more importantly, the sun. The variety of foods is very limited (which makes one wonder how there could be so many stalls) and, at least to me, the most impressive features of these food stalls are the candy displays.

It's a cultural tradition here to bring a gift to someone's house the first time you visit (at least). Very often this is some sort of sweet (or vodka, but that's another story). Similarly, it's traditional to offer a guest some food, usually candy or candies, and some tea. Not to do so is considered very rude. It is then perhaps unsurprising that most stores carry at least five different kinds of candy, selling them by the kilo. The displays themselves often take up half of the display space, as the owners tend to rip off the top of the boxes the candy was shipped in, then set them up next to each other. The result is a 4x4 foot square of nothing but shiny, colorful wrappers. 

Anyway... the layout of this place confuses the holy hell out of me, especially considering that I have the sense of direction of a drunk mouse in a maze with no cheese to shoot for, but if you wander far enough into the section that is bordered by household goods on the right and clothes on the left [the clothes section has been, every time we've gone to the market, completely empty of customers, and is downright eerie in broad daylight], there's a large building (imagine half of a Wal-Mart) which is similarly packed with stores selling much the same kind of things.

You might be wondering how these various stores manage to stay in business, given that they're all selling the same stuff. The answer? I have no idea. My theory is that each store has one or two things that can only be gotten at their stores to attract the requisite number of customers to stay in business. Otherwise? I have no idea. The clothing stores, for instance: there are at least twenty of them in the abandoned, creepy alleyway, and they're all somehow still in business. It beggars belief.

In all, this is a nice place, though. The roaming packs of wild dogs don't seem to exist here, which I like, and the potholes which are characteristic of Mongolian roadways are conspicuously absent. The aimag just celebrated its 90^th anniversary this summer, and apparently did some serious upgrading to its infrastructure. 

So. Yes. 

Heading to site -- now with FOOTNOTES!

August 4, 2015

To begin, a special congratulations to Matt and Joce, and Taylor and Kelly on their respective weddings. We're extremely disappointed that we had to miss, but we will be around for many anniversaries and celebrations to come. Cheers to absent friends!

A lot has happened in the past two weeks, but I'll try to condense it as much as possible. First, Wilco came out with a new album. It's really, really good. You should give it a try if you're a fan of loud, noisy guitars and addictive hooks. I especially like “More...”.

Second, we had a big ol' picnic over the weekend. It was not without its controversy, especially in the planning stages. One of our Mongolian teachers and cultural facilitators made a lot of plans by him or herself with no consultation from virtually anyone else, and conscripted my host father into planning the whole thing. For example, this person told all of us to be ready to go at 6 a.m., but didn't show up until 6:40, claiming that that was when he or she said to be there. It wasn't. He or she also decided that it would end at 8 p.m. So, yeah.

Long story short, we went to a river, ate food, played volleyball, and drank Mongolian traditional vodka, which is apparently made from tarig, a Mongolian yogurt that is super tasty. The vodka is... well, it's... I didn't care for it. I got sunburned, and got to that special place where I was telling everyone I loved them. All things considered, it was nice.

More important, though: Emily came to visit this weekend! Granted, it was the last weekend before the final weekend (August 8 and 9), and she had to come with us to the picnic – which started at 6 and went until 8 – but we still had fun. She's a saint, that one.

This past week and this coming week (starting today, actually), I and several of my fellow PCTs traveled to Darkhan to plan a seminar for about 50 Mongolian English teachers. It gave us a chance to work directly with Mongolian teachers, which is apparently the main focus of our teaching endeavors. I neglected to mention this, but a big part of what we (the TEFL trainees) will do here is help to implement a new curriculum in Mongolia, transitioning from a Soviet style of education (lecture-based) to a more Western style with 'activities' and whatnot. Frankly, the activities bent is a bit out of my experience, and I don't necessarily agree with its effectiveness, especially on the University level. Nonetheless, Peace Corps people reading this blog, I am here to do a job, and I will do it with enthusiasm to the best of my ability. This is as censored as I can get on this one. 

It's confusing, I know. Even more so to me.

What else? Uhhhh mostly it's been studying language and teaching English classes and worrying about where we're going to live for the next two years (we still don't know). We all took what's called the “LPI” (Language Proficiency Indicator – I think I mentioned this in a previous post). The ranking system is fairly simple; novice, intermediate, advanced with each category broken into low, medium and high. Emily and I, for example, both achieved intermediate low, which is as high as anyone got (so far as we know). Most people got novice high, and the minimum to “pass” was the same. Suffice it to say that Emily and I are fairly pleased.

Everything is winding down, and it feels that way. We're excited to get to site, and that will likely be the next post we make. Until then, we send our love.

August 17, 2015

I hope you'll forgive me if this isn't the most interesting post; I want to get to everything, and my brain and body are wrecked from an illness yesterday.

At the moment of writing, I'm sitting in a college dormitory in Ulaanabator (UB) waiting for tomorrow, when Emily and I will fly out to our site, Uvs¹. A far-western aimag, Uvs is rich in natural beauty, sporting the largest lake in the country and a large portion of the Altai mountain range. It is also, apparently, one of the coldest aimags in the country, averaging -40 in late January/early February, already my favorite time of the year. It's also been one of the hardest-hit aimags where climate change is concerned, having demonstrated a 2 degrees Celsius increase since record keeping began ².

Em and I are very excited to live there – it wasn't where we were expecting to be placed, but we requested natural scenery, and knew we would be in a city. I'll be teaching at a college in the city and Emily at a secondary school, and we have both already met one of our counterparts (CP). The two of them speak very good English, and are very friendly, which is a relief. Uvs apparently also has reliable internet available, and we'll be living in a three-room apartment – with a refrigerator and a kitchen and running water and central heating! I suppose we lose a little bit of street cred for not having lived in a ger in -40 degree weather, but honestly, I'm okay with that. Emily seems to be, too.

We're in UB currently after having spent a few days going through more excruciating seminars in Darkhan, our training hub. This was after having said goodbye to our host families, but before being sworn in (which happened on the 15^th). Some of our colleagues stayed in Darkhan to travel to their sites, but most of us had to go to UB for more accessible travel arrangements. Emily and I are scheduled to fly out tomorrow, among the latest to depart, so from the 40-some Americans who were here, there are now something like 10 of us.

It's somewhat bittersweet to say goodbye to all of these people. Most of them are younger, and personally I have trouble making friends (a constant problem, as most of my friends and family already know). Nonetheless, these are mostly good people with their hearts and minds in the right place (even if one of them did use the not-at-all-a-word “irregardless” the other day). I feel privileged to have known them, and when Em and I complete our service, I'll feel honored to call myself a Returned PCV.

Yesterday was Emily's and my one-year anniversary, which is cool, except for my getting violently ill. Coming-out-of-both-ends ill. Still not feeling so hot, but it's better than it was. Regardless, my love for this woman has done nothing but grow, and the fact that we'll celebrate our first two anniversaries (possibly three, depending on our departure date) out of the country just reflects how lucky I am to have found her.

Swearing in was... nice. I don't know what else to say about that; it was a ceremony with a few speakers and some “cultural performances” including three speeches by some of my fellow PCVs – quick note, we're no longer PCTs, as in trainees, but PCVs, volunteers! – in Mongolian, a dance performed by one of the training groups, a song by a few other colleagues, and a stirring rendition of a traditional Mongolian song by one of the more vocally-gifted PCVs. The actual taking of the oath lasted, maybe, five minutes out of a total of about an hour and a half. Most of the rest of the time outside of the ceremony was taken up with photographs, some of which are already on Facebook.

A quick word about my host family: they were extraordinarily kind to me, and I'll never forget their hospitality, patience, and kindness. They were sad to see me go, and I was sad to leave them. They even gave me a mug with a picture of the five of us together³.

That said, Mongolian people are so unbelievably friendly and accommodating that it kind of became a burden, at times. I know, I know; this sounds like an interview response to that question where you're supposed to list your weaknesses but actually make them strengths, right? But seriously – constantly making sure that I'm eating, that I'm not bored or lonely, that I'm not sick, that I'm safe and sound, that I'm doing well in school, that I'm happy with the bed or the food or the country in general. It's a blessing to have someone watch out for you like that, but for my part, I've been on my own for years now, and the transition back to that sort of structured, controlled life was very jarring. 

What else? I don't know. Uh... yeah, I don't know. My brain is fried. Even Emily is passed out next to me, and it's only 3:15. We're looking forward to getting to site and getting to work, and I hope we can share some pictures with you soon. In the meantime, keep us in mind, and we'll do the same.

Oh, and Jaron and Matt and probably Alex: check out this band Haunted Windchimes if you don't already know them. A good song to start with is “Out with the Crow”.

1 You'll probably see me refer to this as “site” from here on out. I apologize for using jargon, but it becomes part of your vocabulary if you're exposed to it long enough,

2 Sorry, still no interwebs to give you a citation.

3Hilariously, Mongolian people absolutely refuse to smile in pictures. There were about ten pictures taken of the five of us, and in ONE of them, I sort of smirked instead of smiling. Sort of, as in the corners of my mouth were slightly upturned. That's the one they chose. They all look like they're angry about the whole thing.

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.