One down, twenty-six to go

Time is a befuddling taskmaster. Yesterday marked one month since we arrived in Mongolia. In some ways that feels absolutely mammoth... perhaps the most impressive month of my life. On the other hand, I can't believe thirty days have already passed, that a legitimate fraction of my Peace Corps service is gone. Mostly I feel pretty accomplished. It's been a hell of a month. I've learned more than I ever thought I could in such a small amount of time, and I've probably changed more than I ever have in such a small amount of time as well, except perhaps for a few of those really intense growth spurts during puberty. Different kinds of change, of course.

Anyway, it's cool. For one of the first times in my life, I'm unabashedly proud of myself, and, deadly sin or not, that's just swell.

So what's up? Diarrhea/vomiting-wise, I'm feeling much better, thank you very much. The last week has been fairly uneventful, until the good days rolled around that is. The good days is what Mongolians call the weekend. Saturday is khagas sain odor, which means "half good day," since they traditionally get half of it off. Sunday is buten sain odor, or "full good day." Like Americans, they tend to have no work at all on that one. So on this "half good day," my PCT pal Brian and I went with Bolortoya, our Mongolian language teacher, to Baganuur to get some supplies for our Fourth of July bash. Baganuur is the nearest city, and I was pretty shocked by just how big a town it is. It really feels like the middle of nowhere out here. We're two hours from Ulaanbaatar, which, as you may be aware, is by far the largest city in this country, and I guess I just assumed that if you didn't head that way, there was nothing. But a mere twenty minutes in the other direction, Baganuur is quite the town. According to one Mongolian woman, thirty thousand people live there, which is quite a few for this place. I'm a little skeptical. Anyone care to find out what wikipedia has to say about the matter? Thirty thousand or not, there are high rise apartment buildings, supermarkets, ATMs, night clubs, etc etc etc. They had everything we needed, from bananas and jellatin to cheap beer and electronic razors to BBQ sauce and peanut M&Ms! It was nice to get out of Small Town Mongolia for a bit, and we even went to a Korean restaurant for lunch and had a few beers with Bolortoya. I really love that woman... one of the most happy-go-lucky teachers I've ever had.

After we got back, Pucha, my sister, helped me make a shit-ton of mashed potatoes for the Fourth of July. None of my family members totally understood why I'd be cooking so many potatoes without adding some sort of meat, but it went well nevertheless. By nightfall we had more than five kilos of pretty darned good smashed potatoes (leaving the skins on may have been the most counfounding aspect of the whole ordeal for them). Then, on "full good day," after quite a few transportation related delays, the eleven of us PCTs and our families managed to get to the countryside for our party. And what a great party it was! Aside from my potatoes, us Americans also managed to cook up some french fries, potato salad, deviled eggs (which unfortunately went bad in the July heat before they could be enjoyed), fruit salad, and even banana pudding! The gathering was held right by a little lake, and although none of the Mongolians could swim and consequently were quite afraid of our wading out beyond where we could stand, we had a great time splashing around... especially considering how hot it's been. We even slaughtered and barbecued our own sheep just for the occasion, and we smothered it in BBQ sauce, sang the Star Spangled Banner, and had what was bar none the best Independence Day of my life. Sans fireworks! There was a fair amount of decent Mongolian beer, and they kept presenting us with bottles of vodka as vestations of their appreciation of our decision to come live in their town for ten weeks. Needless to say, by the end of the night, I was fairly tipsy and had no problem at all dancing in the headlights on the lakeshore to Michael Jackson. Earlier in the day, some of the men had carried Bolortoya kicking and screaming into the lake, and since that point she'd been wandering around without any pants on, which was quite amusing, and certainly my first experience of that sort with a teacher. I tell ya, there are few things quite as debilitatingly hysterical as drunkenly doing the Mongolian waltz with your pantsless teacher on a beach at sunset. As lovely as that was, perhaps the most touching part of the whole night was when my dad decided he was going to sing a song, just for me. It bears noting that we sing and play guitar a lot in my house, and my dad never so much as joins in during the big group singalongs. He's a fairly reticent guy. But this night, he chose to serenade me, and he was really good! The song was one of the coolest I've heard so far, too, and while my Mongolian is far from good enough to understand lyrics on the first run-through, I did pick up a few mentions of family and welcoming and all that jazz, so it seems to have been a very heartfelt choice on his part.

Point is, it was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time, and if I can have even one day half as good as this one every now and then, these twenty-six remaining months are going to be an absolute breeze. And with a people and culture as fantastic, welcoming, and fun-loving as Mongolia's, I think that's fairly likely.

Oh, there was one other thing last week, on Wednesday I believe... a few of the other PCTs, Bolortoya, and I went to a mini-Naadam out in the countryside. I mentioned Naadam in my last post, but in case you've forgotten, it's the festival of the three manly sports (horseback riding, wrestling, and archery), and it's one of the two biggest Mongolian celebrations (Tsagaan Sar, the lunar New Year, being the other). Our town will be having one this week, but unfortunately we're scheduled to be in Zuunmod the whole time. Thus, this mini-Naadam was one of our only chances to see this incredibly important event before 2011. While there was no archery, at least not that day, it was still pretty cool. The wrestling was quite unlike any kind I'd seen before (see the pic above of several of us with a couple wrestlers... I'm doing my best to look strong next to those titans), and watching those horses come barrelling across the steppe, leaving enormous clouds of dust in their wake, was an incredibly romantic image. Just to imagine that these creatures are the descendants of those that carried Genghis and his hordes to conquer half the world eight hundred years ago was pretty mind-blowing. Fortunately, if I understand my family right, I think we'll be going to Baganuur's Naadam next week, after I get back from Zuunmod, so hopefully I'll get a chance to see all this stuff again and in a little more detail.

In other news, the three other PCT men living at this site and I have just embarked upon what will certainly rank among the most challenging and harrowing segments of our Peace Corps service... A MOUSTACHE COMPETITION. We all shaved our upper lips, and the contest is to see who can cultivate the finest moustache before swearing in, which will take place in mid-August. No beards allowed... we have to suffer the humiliation of growing a moustache all on its own. The ladies here at site will be the judges, and the losers have to buy drinks for the winner one night when we're in Ulaanbaatar next month. While I hold out very little hope for my chances of taking the blue ribbon (Kevin, one of the other participants, is forty years old, and Andrew, another, while the same age as me, regularly grows a fine one), I'm pretty excited for the sheer absurdity anyway. Life is a little slow out here in east-central Mongolia.

Finally, yesterday I had my Trainee Assessment Packet interview and this morning was my LPI (Language Proficiency Interview), and I'm pleased to say that PC is pretty happy with my progress. Bolortoya had nothing but good things to say about me, and the TEFL team were also full of compliments. The one caveat they did give me was that I make sure to keep my sarcastic sense of humor in check. While I've had no embarassing incidents so far, they reminded me that often those sorts of jokes have a real hard time getting across a language barrier. Good advice.

Welp, tomorrow morning we get up bright and early to head back to Zuunmod for Mid-Center Days, and as I said in the last post, I'm super-pumped! Apparently there's going to be a dodgeball tournament between all the sites. Fuckin a! The internet is much faster there, so I'm going to try to get a sizable album of pics up on Facebook, as well as log onto Skype and/or Gchat and/or FB chat a little. If anyone is online around 6-8 AM Eastern standard time on Wednesday and Thursday morning as well as 8-10 PM EST Wednesday and Thursday night, keep an eye out for me. I won't be on all that time by any stretch, but those are my most likely windows. I'd love to chat!

I'll leave you with this pic of Bolortoya and me the night of the Fourth. What a night.