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.