Alright, so it's been a ridiculously long time since I've made a real post. When we came back from Mid-Center Days in Zuunmod, the internet had disappeared, and it just never came back. Anyway, this post is pretty much a full summation of what's happened since then, so it's fucking long. If you're interested in details, read on. Otherwise, know that life is good, and while I'm excited for the next step of Peace Corps service, I've grown to really love it here, and I'm gonna be pretty bummed to leave.
Okay, here's a post I'd written before I knew the internet was gone. It covers Mid-Center Days and the week or so that's followed. At the end I've tacked on what happened since, in much less detail.
"What a week! Between Mid-Center Days in Zuunmod and the long weekend we got for Naadam, there've been some pretty exciting goings-on. We'll start from the top.
Mid-Center Days was wicked fun, just as I expected. It was absolutely lovely to get out of town for a couple days and to see all the other M21s and find out how they've been doing at their respective sites. Sessions were a bit boring, but each of the two nights bore witness to some supremely entertaining debauchery. Not much from the first evening bears repeating. We had some drinks and caught up, etc etc etc. The more noteworthy happening that day came earlier, when we got to check out Zuunmod's Buddhist monastery. It was the first I'd ever been to, and it was really cool. I feel very fortunate to be in a country that doesn't follow any of those God-Allah-Yahweh doctrines and to get to see how a totally different system of belief works.
The next day, however, was just action-packed. Or the night was at any rate. It actually started out on a somewhat sour note. I was feeling a little queasy, and after the previous night I was planning to take it easy, in spite of the festivities Peace Corps had planned for us. First off, they'd organized a delish Mongolian BBQ, minus the animal slaughter. Instead they just cooked a ton of wicked tasty kebabs. Following that, we had the DODGEBALL TOURNAMENT! It was all the sites versus one another, and there were also two teams for our trainers and one team for the language teachers. Needless to say, I'd been talking nothing but shit to all the other sites for the two days prior about how we were going to destroy them. All the while I was fairly convinced that we'd be eliminated in the first round. Our site isn't
unathletic by any means, but some of the other sites are pretty freaking competitive. Nevertheless, somehow we pulled it together and took first prize! It was so awesome (see victory picture above). Actually, it wasn't even that close; we beat every team but one by a sound margin. And the final game had the most perfect ending possible. We'd eliminated all but one of the other team's players. One of the balls started rolling toward the center line, and Brian, definitely our MVP, ran up and kneeled down to retrieve it. The opposing team's sole remaining player got ready to peg him, and in that position, I was convinced Brian was a goner. But then, just as our opponent lobbed the ball at him, Brian ducked out of the way and lightly tossed the ball he'd just grabbed, tagging the other guy and winning the game! My description is certainly lacking, but rest assured, it was unbe-fucking-lievable. We all rushed to the center and hugged one another and, after that sort of a win, how could I help but party!?!?!
We went back to the dorms and started drinking, and that's when I received my new Peace Corps nickname. This one guy, Eric, has a penchant for giving pretty unsavory nicknames that somehow catch on. The aforementioned Brian is now universally known as "Fat Fuck" thanks to Eric (Brian has barely any fat on his body, which is why it's so amusing). Andrew, another guy at my site, we call "Khashaa Mom."
Khashaa is the Mongolian term for "yard," and our host families are often referred to as "khashaa families" because we live in the same yard as them. Khashaa Mom then makes fun of Andrew's penchant for being (comparatively) responsible. Anyway, probably for talking trash to Eric about how we were gonna kick his ass and similar tendencies, he dubbed me "That Piece of Shit John Russell." Perhaps others would be unhappy with this sobriquet, but I actually kind of like it. It rolls off the tongue quite elegantly. And hey, at least I'm not Fat Fuck.
After some substantial pregaming, I was more than ready to go break it down at the dance party PC was throwing for us. It was hot as hell, but the music was loud, the company was good, and the ladies were lovely. All in all it turned out to be a great night.
After some more sessions the next day, we came back to our little town. I got home around 7:30, and my family had khosher (really tasty fried mutton pastries) waiting for me from Naadam, which, as I said before, we unfortunately missed in our own town. Afterwards, I presented them with a whole slew of gifts comliments of my Aunt Claire and Uncle Ron, who had shipped them to me in a care package. There was a lot of candy, which I've already established Mongolians love, some balsa wood toy airplanes, a Red Sox plush doll for baby Monkhtolga, and a card which I struggled to translate into Mongolian for them. They loved it all, and after eating a shit ton of candy, we went outside and played with the airplanes for a while, which was a blast. Thanks Claire and Ron! You can see a pic of them flying the gliders below.
The next day, they took me to Baganuur to get some Korean food and go shopping, and then we went to my aunt and uncle's house for the night. On the way, my cousin showed me an aerosol bottle of some sort. To explain what it was, he pantomimed throwing it at the ground and an explosion resulting. I laughed, somewhat confusedly, and assumed its use would have nothing to do with me. How wrong I was. At my aunt and uncle's khashaa, I got sleepy and took a nap. When they woke me up, they told me to come outside, for dinner was cooking. And can you guess what it was???
BOODOG! TARWAG! BLOWTORCHED MARMOT! I don't know if you remember my entry a while back about this, but boodog is a summer treat for Mongolians, and while I was sure I'd get to have a taste eventually, I didn't think it would be so soon. I shoulda paid a little more attention to my cousin's aerosol can, I suppose. There she lay, the little rodent's head cut off and her neck sinched up, hot rocks inside, and my uncle blowtorching the hair right off, stopping every now and then so he or my aunt could scrape the char (see pic below). It took about a half hour or so (I kicked myself for napping through the earlier stages of the process). When they were done, they washed the little guy down, sliced him open, and we dug in. The meat was nothing special; it tasted pretty similar to beef or mutton, but it was such a unique experience that I quite enjoyed myself. I even kept one of the rocks as a souvenir.
We spent the rest of the evening playing some volleyball and frisbee, sitting around drinking and talking, and looking through family photo albums. The next morning, after breakfast, we headed to Kherlen Gol, a river that rises in Khentii Aimag, Genghis Khan's homeland, and flows many miles east through Mongolia and into a lake in China, which eventually drains in the Pacific Ocean (I believe... perhaps a wiki search is in order once more?). For such a mighty river, it was pretty narrow where we were, and shallow enough to walk across the whole thing without getting your shorts wet. We waded around and washed up a bit, and then sat on the bank and had lunch. A couple days of total Mongolian immersion following so quickly on the heels of partying with lots of English-speaking friends in Zuunmod had put me into something of a funk, and my family could tell. I sat there, sipping milk tea, staring at the gently rolling water and the ripples brought by light rain. I said very little. It was too bad, because, pensive though I may have been, I was really enjoying myself. Before leaving, we played some more volleyball and frisbee, and my involvement made them happier.
The next day, us Americans went for the biggest hike I've been on so far (seven hours, or twelve to fourteen miles we estimated), and that was quite the mood ameliorator. Our elation is apparent in the above picture. In case you haven't gathered already, this country is fucking beautiful, and infinitely hikable, so we couldn't help but have a wonderful time. That night was our final evening of real vacation, so we went to Carolyn's ger and passed around the vodka and talked about our feelings, which are, surprise surprise, quite complex following five weeks in Mongolia. Or however long we've been here. Long enough for me to finally stop dreaming about America. I may have mentioned this in a prior entry, but literally every dream I had for several weeks was about leaving for PC, and how I in one way or another didn't have enough time to say goodbye to everyone I needed to, or to do all the things I wanted to do before I left. Something about Mid-Center Days finally displaced my subconscious into Mongolia, and since then I've been dreaming about more pertinent topics, mostly final site placement. So far they've still been somewhat unsatisfactory... in one I got placed in Darkhan, Mongolia's third largest city and a place I'd really rather not be. In another, I went to the Gobi, and I've met very few people who actually desire to head there.
Oh well. We'll see how the next few weeks, the last month of PST, affect my psyche. I'm going to be pretty busy. Aside from more language classes, we're starting full blown practice teaching, which basically takes the form of a mini-semester, and whose planning will consume the rest of this week. We'll also be involved in a fairly extensive community assessment project. Two weeks from now, I believe my family is headed back to Baganuur for their Naadam. Then, in August, we have both a community and a host family appreciation day. Us teacher trainers will also head west to Nalaikh for a couple days for some sort of seminar on our specific duties, which seems to be a bit short of what is needed there, but what do I know. There's probably several other legit activities I'm forgetting as well. Point is, if I thought I was busy in June, I ain't seen nothing yet. B-b-b-baby I just ain't seen nothing yet."
Alright so that was what I'd written around July 13 or so. Then, on July 19, I added this:
"Okay, that's what I had... since then, I've basically been doing all that stuff I mentioned, as well as playing a lot of cribbage with my friend Kaede, which helps to keep me sane, even if she beats me the large majority of the time. Not much of consequence happened last week after I wrote. I spent a lot of my afternoons sitting in the internet cafe praying for enough connection to check my email and make this post. All in vain. Then, this last weekend, we had registration for our new classes. The picture below is pretty representative of what that process was like. It was basically two afternoons of interviewing anyone in town who's interested in learning English so as to assign him or her a level. We got about seventy people, which was a lot fewer than we'd anticipated, but it went pretty well just the same. Other than that, on Friday we had a pretty silly karaoke down at the 'cultural center.' All the songs were Mongolian, so eventually we just found a bunch of non-karaoke American tunes (Michael Jackson, Lady GaGa, Black-Eyed Peas, Shaggy, JLo, among others) and turned it into a dance party. It was definitely the most I've ever broken it down before dinner without drinking. Pretty hysterical.
Later that night, I went over to Andrew's ger for his brother Oogie's birthday. As tends to happen in this country, we drank more than we'd expected and bonded with Oogie over all sorts of different things. He wants to come to America for his doctorate in a few years. We told him we'd take him on a big road trip together. Awesome.
On Monday (today, as I write this), we had our first class of the new session. My group and I are teaching two courses: beginner adult and beginner child. It went pretty well, although some of those preteens are real hellraisers. Even though I'm less likely to be teaching children, it's good to get the practice. After that, I made everyone else really jealous, as I received three packages, two letters, and a postcard. Although the postcard was from Peter while he was in Scotland, and it depicted a very hunky looking Scot wearing just a kilt and looking quite prevocative. Thanks Pete. Unfortunately, two of the boxes contained items that exploded. One box from Aunt Claire and Uncle Ron had some honey in it which got everywhere, and another from my mom had a bunch of individual peanut butter containers, pretty much all of which popped. Still, the packages were really really nice, and the peanut butter is DELISH (my friends were so desperate for the stuff they scooped it off the inside of the box and ate it). Oh, and thanks to everyone from my cousin Kiernan's wedding who wrote a message in the little notebook for me! That was super nice to read. Although it made me miss all of you a lot.
Hmm... anything else at this point? Well I was walking my aforementioned friend Kaede home an hour or so ago, and we had our first run-in with Mongolia's notoriously ill-tempered dogs. PC nonstop warns us about how dogs are not pets here and are mainly used to defend their owners' khashaas. As a result, they're often treated poorly and can be quite aggressive. All the dogs I'd run into, however, had been pretty freaking docile, except for some barking here and there. UNTIL TONIGHT. As Kaede and I were walking down the hill toward town, a dog came leaping out of his khashaa, snarling and barking and probably drooling all over himself, though it was too dark to see. I shined my light on his eyes, which usually is sufficient to make them back off, but it only delayed this guy a little. He kept advancing on us, so I yelled "JO," which is also supposed to work, but it didn't. Then I faked throwing a rock at him, which they say is good, and might have worked in the daytime, but at night he probably couldn't even perceive the motion, especially with my flashlight hat shining in his eyes. By this point he was only a few feet away and still going fucking nuts. I knelt down to find a real rock to throw at him, but he managed to catch me at the one spot in this incredibly rock-ridden nation where there were none. Finally I spotted a pebble big enough to do some damage, and I whipped it right at him. I barely missed, but it was enough to get him to back off, and to give Kaede and me a window to back out. Haha, it was a little intimidating, but I'm pretty sure that even if the rock hadn't worked, I coulda kicked his yapping fucking head in. Hopefully I'll never have to find that one out for sure.
Okay, it's 11:30, and my ger is quickly filling with tiny obnoxious beetles that love my bright lightbulb. If I don't turn it off soon, they'll be crawling on me all night, which makes falling asleep pretty unpleasant. Sometimes when it's real bad, I have to turn on my booklight and throw it across the room so they'll flock to it and leave me the fuck alone. Good times.
Hopefully I'll be able to post this tomorrow! Love you all! Miss you all!"
Clearly that didn't work. Finally, I'd written this:
"Okay, I wasn't, so here's Tuesday night's brief addendum. First off, I cleaned all the honey and peanut butter off the other stuff Claire, Ron, and my mom sent me. Unfortunately, Claire had written me a nice long letter which had been rendered illegible by all the honey. I was about to throw it away, and then I thought, what the hell, I'll drop it in the water and see if I can't read it. Surprisingly enough, her handwriting became crystal clear, and I read the whole thing! Afterwards, I hung the paper up to dry, hoping I can add it to all the other correspondence I've received, which I hope to collect while here. The whole process made me feel like some sort of a crappy amateur archaeologist. So thanks for that unexpected pleasure as well, Auntie!"
So in the two weeks or so since then, I've been incredibly fucking busy, just as I'd predicted. Classes have been going well. At first, we had no idea how to deal with the children's group. It was difficult to keep them entertained and engaged, but we learned quickly, and through a mix of games, candy-based motivation, and more Beatles songs, teaching them has become nearly pleasant. In addition to that class, Kaede and Kevin, the two other teacher trainers, and I headed to Nalaikh last Thursday to meet with all the other trainers to plan our English methodology seminar. We're here for the night, which is the reason I'm able to post this. Today, we finished our lesson planning. Tomorrow, six groups will present fifty-five minute seminars on various topics. My group is discussing the challenges of adapting a textbook lesson to fit a forty minute class, the standard here in Mongolia. While I don't feel entirely qualified, we're working with Mongolian English teacher counterparts, so I think we've managed to put together something useful, if not authoritative.
Considering how busy we've been, not that much else of interest has happened. The weekend before last, most of us went to Baganuur to see their Naadam (see above picture of a baby dressed up in a wrestler's outfit). Although I didn't actually get to check out many of the three manly sports, it was a pretty nice time all the same. A lot of the festivities were actually quite similar to what you might see at an American celebration. There was a parade of sorts, some dancing, even a fireman's muster. The highlight must have been a drug bust the police department staged, complete with blank-loaded guns and everything. It was pretty hilarious. Other than that, we got to see a little concert, had a few drinks, used the internet, as you know. I also took a shower, which was fantastic. The next day, we headed back in the afternoon, and on the way, we stopped at the big sign that tells eastbound travelers they've arrived in Baganuur. There, we pulled over and out came a bottle of vodka. My extended family and I spent the next half an hour or so destroying it. Drunk, nationalistic, and happy as clams at high tide, we poured out of the car and took a bunch of silly pics on and around the Baganuur sign (an example of which is below), and then my little brother Gan-Ochir, who was fortunately sober, drove us home. My mom and I sat in the backseat and drunkenly bonded, in spite of my crappy Mongolian. I told her, my father, and my brother they were the best family in the world, and she told me whom I should marry. Good times.
On Tuesday, Peace Corps shocked our little site to its core when they told us that two of our sitemates, Brian and Adi, would be going to Bayan-Olgii for their permanent placement. Bayan-Olgii is Mongolia's westernmost aimag (province). It's sandwiched right between Russia and China, and it's home to the nation's largest mountains (some tower above 14,000 ft!). No one finds out their site placement until the very end of PST unless they're headed to BO, the reason being that BO is the one aimag where Mongolians do not comprise a majority. BO is predominantly Kazakh, and while the people and culture are somewhat similar to Mongolia's, there are several major differences, the two most significant being that they are Muslim and they speak Kazakh. This second fact is the cause for informing Brian and Adi early. Tomorrow, the two of them will move to Nalaikh for the remainder of PST. There, they will live with Kazakh host families and have intensive Kazakh language courses. It's only for one week, but hopefully it'll go a long way toward preparing them for the next two years.
Going to BO, like going to the Gobi, is not something many volunteers pine for. While BO is commonly considered one of the most beautiful aimags, learning another language and culture is a lot of work, especially after spending two months preparing for something else entirely. Also, it's the most remote part of the country. To get from BO to Ulaanbaatar requires either an expensive plane ticket or a forty-eight hour (minimum) bus ride, neither of which is very appealing. Peace Corps will fly them in now and then for seminars and the like, but for the most part, they're stuck out there. Furthermore, and this is related to the first point, we've spent half a year or so prepping ourselves to serve in Mongolia. Getting assigned to Bayan-Olgii is akin to being reassigned to Kazakhstan (a feeling with which my fellow PCV friends Rebecca in Mozambique and Sharif in Azerbaijan are not unfamiliar), to finding out that the next two years will be absolutely nothing like you'd expected.
All that said, both Brian and Adi (especially Adi) seem pretty pumped. And to be honest, I'm kinda jealous. The natural beauty of the region is truly breathtaking, and after living in Egypt for five months, I've become quite a fan of Muslim culture. I'd love to see how it plays out in somewhere as far from Mecca as Mongolia. Oh well, I guess I get the best of both worlds, for now I have two good friends to stay with when I visit!
The main reason I bring this up relates to the feelings we Americans experienced when we found out. It was an enormous reality check. Peace Corps informed Adi and Brian during language classes this morning, and when Brian came in to tell us, we were incredulous. It literally took about five minutes for us to believe he was telling the truth. He insisted he wasn't lying, but we were still doubtful. Finally he left the room, and it wasn't until I saw him in the hallway, standing by the window and gazing out at our town, a place that had become his home and which he was about to leave with only a few days notice, barely the time it would take to ride a bus to his new site, an absolutely unidentifiable emotion on his face, it wasn't until then that I realized he was telling the truth. Pretty soon we all did, and even though it was more than two hours before schedule, language class was killed for the day. None of us could've even imagined trying to learn at that point. Several of us cried, including Bolortoya, our language teacher, but mostly we just sat in silence, reiterating our shock in meaningless declaratives. "I can't believe it." "That's fucking ridiculous." "They're leaving." It's hard to say exactly why it hit us so hard. We've known all along that we'd have to say goodbye to this town. Indeed, most of us have been fairly excited about it. Sure, going to BO is a little more intense, and it's a real bummer that Brian and Adi have to leave a week early, but it is only a week, and we will see them again at Final Center Days. I suppose we just didn't want to believe that we were going to have to leave each other, that we wouldn't always have a support base as strong as our host families, our language teachers, and the ten other Americans who have so comprehensively become our lives over these last two months.
Two months exactly, in fact. Two months ago today our plane touched down and we set foot on Mongolian soil for the first time. I can't believe how much has changed
