Mmmmmmmboy

Here's a few little videos pertaining to Mongolia which may interest you. The first two are from Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, a show from the Travel Channel. The second video paints a very, shall we say, earnest portrayal of the kind of stuff Mongolians eat, whereas the first one is a little more appetizing.

Mongolian Dumplings

Top 5 moments in Mongolia (not for the weak-stomached)

And this last one is a little sadder. It's about the ongoing famine in Mongolia which is getting more devastating by the day. I hope it rains soon! Props to Sari Gardner for finding it (and once again to Jason Patrick Douglas for the first two vids).

A Bitter Spring for Mongolia's Nomads (this one's a wee bit unappe- tizing as well...)

OMG it's really happening!

So us soon-to-be trainees all received quite the email from headquarters a few days ago. In it we were given our first glimpse at the details of the next few months of our lives, and let me tell you, it's a bit intimidating. After getting over the initial shock a few months ago, I've felt very little anxiety about this whole Peace Corps dilio. But now that departure is less than three weeks away and I'm starting to get a better idea of the reality of my impending life in Mongolia, I'm pretty much crapping my pants.

So here's a few things I've found out.

• We'll arrive in Ulaanbaatar late at night on Saturday, June 5, (though it'll be early morning back in America!), and then we'll hop on a bus to Zuunmod, a small city of about fifteen thousand people. Zuunmod is about fifteen miles south of UB as the crow flies but nearly thirty miles by car. The road is so much longer because it has to wind around Bogd Khan Uul, the three thousand foot mountain that sits between the two cities (click the map above for a larger image; UB, Bogd Khan Uul, and Zuunmod are just to the lower left of center).
• In Zuunmod, we'll be given the first fourteen days of our walk-around allowance as well as a -40° sleeping bag. We'll be there for at least the next five days for orientation, living in dorms.
• After that, we'll be sent off to our host families, where we'll be for all of Pre-Service Training, which will take up the next ten weeks. I'll be in a community with between eight and twelve other trainees, but we'll each be living with a different family. I still don't know where I'll be for this portion of service, but I doubt it will be Zuunmod or Ulaanbaatar.
• Training for Mongolian PC service follows the Community Based Model. Rather than sitting in classrooms and studying in the more traditional way, we'll be doing much of our learning experientially, through engaging with the community in which we live. Apparently this is a relatively new thing for the Peace Corps, and many nations still use the older style. However, it sounds like a more efficient method to me, so I'm excited about that.
• Apparently while being trained, we'll also be responsible for conducting a community service activity in our area. Just to keep the stress level maxed out.
• Assuming I survive training and am chosen to become a Volunteer, I will be sworn in back in Zuunmod on Friday, August 20.
• While in Zuunmod, it will be fairly easy to stay connected via the telephones at the post office and the city's two internet cafes. However, the email says that communication will be much more difficult once we're living with our host families. We are told to "be prepared for this limited communication and prepare your family [back home] for the fact that you probably will be able to call or email them only rarely after you head out to your host community."

So yeah, pretty intense. But already a lot of the anxiety has dissipated and I'm getting excited again.

My time in Maine has been nice so far, although I wish I were getting more hours at work. I've been spending too much money, but at least I've been doing a lot of the things I'm gonna miss a lot: going to my favorite restaurants, eating lots of seafood, seeing my buds, going bowling. Jonny Hyman, one of Peter's best friends from college and a very good friend of mine as well, was in town all last week, and then this weekend Eric Gibbs, one of my best buds from Oberlin, came to town. He and I went hiking in northern Maine (see pic below) with Erin Child, another Obie, and generally had a great time. Saying all these goodbyes is getting rough, but I guess that's just the way it goes.

I've also been studying a little Mongolian. I'm focusing on the alphabet, but I've got some words down too. Here's how you say goodbye: bayartai!

Crying in the Aisle

Wowie wow wow. A month from now I'll have been in Mongolia for three days already. Yesterday I called the Peace Corps travel agency and booked my flight to staging in San Francisco. I have to leave at the fucking crack of dawn from Portland on June 3, but my travel agent was so charming that I barely noticed. He had a very endearing Indian accent and he told me that I should not worry but the Peace Corps would not be mailing me a paper ticket because they have no money, and neither would the airlines because they have no money either. And then he said he liked my state because it's abbreviation sounds like "me." Finally, he asked, "would you prefer a window seat so you can wave goodbye to mom and dad since you won't see them for three years, or would you rather sit in the aisle and cry?"

Staging sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'll get into San Fran at 11:20 or so, and then we have some preliminary training until 7 at night. After that I'm pretty sure we're given some money to go out and get trashed on our last night in the country. But the shuttle takes us to the airport at 6 AM the next morning to leave for Mongolia (layover in South Korea!), so I doubt there'll be much sleeping.

In other news, I'm back in Maine. On my birthday I drove to Boston to go see a Red Sox game and celebrate with my friends. It was a lot of fun. Then I came the rest of the way so I could start work at Handy Boat yesterday. I was supposed to work today and tomorrow too, but there are only a dozen boats in the water, so they told me I didn't need to come in. Which totally sucks because, after I finish buying all the crap I need for the PC, I'm gonna have no money in the bank for the next two years. Oh well. At least I have some sweet dancing to look forward to (props to fellow M21 Jason Patrick Douglas for finding the video).