Sarah & Carolyn bring Puppy Season to Lenintown!

Clearly this is a three-part entry, so I'll write it as such. In spite of the catchy title, they actually have little to do with one another.

Sarah & Carolyn


You may remember these two from the summer. They lived in Bayandelger with Kaede and me, and they were two of our best buds. Well, they're also quite close with Bob and some of my other sitemates, so they decided to use the beginning of their spring breaks to come see the glory that is Choibalsan! It was really nice to have them visit for a few days. It felt like I was seeing old friends for the first time in a long while, and so I was repeatedly shocked to remember that I'd known these people less than ten months, that it had been barely three since I'd seen Carolyn and less than two since I'd seen Sarah. Weird. Fortunately, I was on my break for the greater part of their time here as well, so we spent most of our days laying around Bob's apartment, eating food, and going on long walks around the city and surrounding areas, as you can see in the picture above. Sarah's all the way on the left, and Carolyn is next to her. It was sad to say goodbye. Kaede and I might see Carolyn next week in UB, but the next time I see Sarah, I might well be a married man!

Puppy Season


As you may be aware, dogs go into heat twice a year, which means that, in countries where strays aren't packed off to the pound, there are two times a year when the city is suddenly full of adorable, starving, unwanted puppies. This is one of them. It didn't affect me as much the last time it happened, which was right around when we got here in the fall. That was probably due to how busy and overwhelmed I was as well as the fact that I still wasn't much of a dog person. But now that I've grown to love Jagaa and am a little more used to this place, it's nigh on unbearable. Every puppy I see is so adorable and sad and I just want to take them all in and bathe them and feed them and NURTURE THEM!!! Alas, that is totally unfeasible, so I have to settle for playing with them and encouraging Jagaa not to be terrified of them, a hefty endeavor indeed. Oh well, if I can just hold out a month or so, they'll all be dead or grown up, and I'll be able to go back to walking this town guiltlessly.


In other (former) puppy related news, Jagaa had quite a traumatizing week. If you've seen my new Facebook picture, you might already have the gist of it, but here's the story in full. When Sarah and Carolyn were here, the two of them, Bob, and I went for a sunset stroll down to the river, a place I often take Jagaa. We were walking on the river, which has been frozen solid for months, when Bob expressed concern over the apparent thinness of the ice ahead. I stubbornly insisted it was fine and trekked onward, only to hear it start to give under my feet and immediately retreat. The four of us ran up onto the bank and were collecting ourselves when we suddenly realized we'd lost the dog. "Where's Jagaa?" I asked. "Where is Jagaa?" Sarah emphasized. Just then, a herder who'd been sitting with his friend on the opposite bank leaped to his feet, bounded down onto the river, and ran out to the middle of the ice. He dropped to his knees, reached into a hole we had not noticed, and when he pulled his hand back, he had Jagaa by her leg. She was screaming and dripping with dirty ice water. The herder dropped her and of course she booked it. We shook off our absolutely flabbergasted shock, I ran after Jagaa so I could shove her in my coat and get her warm, and the other three profusely thanked the herder for his heroic deed and gave him their cigarettes as compensation. He returned to his perch and laughed his ass off about it with his friend. We headed back to my place to give Jagaa a bath and warm her up. She was pretty quiet the rest of the day, but I'm happy to announce that she seems to have made a full psychological recovery, and the cold has not affected her physically in any noticeable way. Here's a picture we snapped of her and me next to the hole she fell in just after the incident. I figured I'd juxtapose it with the picture of me next to the hole I fell in nearly ten months ago when I was drunk during orientation. Just a chip off the old block, right? Kaede's response when I told her this story was, "well this bodes well for our offspring." Actually it was uncontrollable laughter followed by that comment. Haha, she's probably right.


Lenintown


On the long road that heads west out of town to UB, I always notice a field right on the edge of the city limits but long past anything that really resembles a city. I notice it because there are three prominent standing structures surrounded on all sides by rubble. Two of them are statues, one of which is a large upright Lenin, the other a man on his knees lifting a gun into the air. The third structure is a large hollowed-out building that looks like it could have been a reconstruction of the Parthenon. I've always wanted to walk out to this area and explore it and take some semblance of interesting, thought-provoking pictures. Well yesterday, Bob, Susanne, and I did just that. Unfortunately we underestimated the distance a bit and got there just as the sun was setting, which made for prettier pictures but allowed less time to explore. I had heard that this area had been the Soviet center of Choibalsan before communism fell and the Russians got the hell out of Dodge twenty years back, but I was skeptical because, other than those three structures, there was pretty much nothing else remaining in that area at all. But as we approached Lenintown, as I've affectionately dubbed it, the ground became positively covered in the debris of fallen buildings. By the time we actually made it to the statues, it was clear that they were on either side of what had once been a large city square, and everywhere we looked were the crumbling foundations of what once must have been very impressive buildings. The population of Choibalsan before the Russians left was about sixty thousand. Now it's forty thousand. That's how many Russians got out of here, and this is where a great many of them surely lived. I was bummed that we didn't have enough time to rummage around more, but even in the few moments we spent out there, it was one of the most mind-blowing experiences I've had in this country. It felt like I was exploring the ruins of an ancient Roman city, and yet only twenty years ago this place was bustling with Russians at the end, both geographically and chronologically, of their empire. I can't wait to get out there again a bit earlier in the day and learn more.



Epilogue

Mongolia continues its slow march (no pun intended!) toward warmth. It's almost t-shirt weather! Which really means it's almost to the point where I'm so fed up that I refuse to wear a coat outside anymore. But really, it's supposed to be in the 50s this week! Even better news is that on Tuesday, after the aimag olympics, I fly to UB for the VAC meeting, where Kaede will meet me! I'm using a few of my vacation days, so after the meeting on Friday, Kaede and I will head out to Tsetserleg and spend a week together. We're gonna make BLTs!

That's all. Stay classy, Planet Earth.

Happy Birthday, Genghis Jhan!

Out here in Mongolia, it has just become March 19, which as I'm sure you all know, is this blog's birthday! I can't believe it's been a year since I made my first post (I also can't believe I didn't know that "sain baina uu?" is a question, let alone what it means). It's pretty funny to go back and read those first entries. I'm sure you all have big celebrations planned for this momentous occasion. I hope you guys made your own Genghis Jhan costumes and cakes. Those store-bought ones they've probably had in stock since Valentine's Day are never any good.

Alright, I'm done talking crazy. On a more serious note, there was a real reason to celebrate today, or yesterday I suppose. It was Soldier's Day. I would have expected this to be a lot like Memorial Day or Veteran's Day, but actually it doesn't matter whether you've served in the army or not; if you have male genitalia, you get honored. Which is probably the reason people also refer to it as Men's Day. In my last post, I forgot to mention that, last week, on March 8th, we celebrated Women's Day. You might know about that one, since it's an international holiday (although America is one of the countries that does not observe it). In a lot of ways it was similar to Mother's Day, although there was a lot more drinking involved. Soldier's Day/Men's Day then is a bit more like Father's Day then those other ones I mentioned, except for three things. First, as I said, all men are celebrated, not just fathers. Second, again, there's a lot more drinking. And finally, people play a lot, and I do mean a lot, of ridiculous games. Which is exactly what we did at my school. This morning, seeing as how I'm a soldier, er... man, and all, I was given an invitation to our school's celebration that afternoon. When I showed up, some of the school's female teachers showed me to a seat at a table covered in different sorts of food, and soon thereafter, we began the first of sixteen games. After each one, the loser was eliminated from the tournament, so that we began with seventeen teachers playing and ended with just one champion. I made it about halfway through, but I'm glad I got out when I did, as the games just kept getting more ridiculous. Here are a bunch of pictures that Zoloo and other teachers took. I usually don't post so many at once, but there's just no better way to relate the hilarity of this event.


One of the many winners of the first game: stack the bottle caps using chopsticks. I think this guy is some sort of science teacher. I have trouble keeping them all straight.


Lining up for the second game: carry the tennis ball using the centrifugal force caused by spinning it around in a jar.


Easy peasy.


We each had to race to a balloon and pop it by sitting on it. Of course, one of them was secretly filled with water. Mongolian roulette.


A toast from the hardest working director in Dornod!


Ariuka, the music teacher, readies himself for the next game: move the box of matches across the floor using the tennis ball suspended from your ass. This guy is a real hoot, by the way. One of my favorite teachers outside the English department.



This was my losing game: move as many of the candied peanuts as you can from one dish to another using a spoon in your mouth. It's just as tough as it sounds.


Some of the games were dripping with sexual tension, like this one: hold a woman on your knees for as long as you can.


One of my favorites: make yourself up to look like a beautiful woman!



I think you'll agree that I had no choice but to include all of these.





It's important to look manly on Soldier's Day.


Eat the apple off the string without your hands!



The final contest: try to eat a slice of cake off a table without using your hands while tied to another guy who's trying to do the same thing with another piece of cake on another table on the opposite side of the room. It was a bitter struggle, but my friend the music teacher won.


I won a tea thermos with Chinggis Khaan on it in the lottery! Oddly enough, it was the only one of the many prizes that I had any real use for, so that was convenient.


Group shot of all the men with their prizes, plus our director.

So yeah, a pretty good time overall. I had been worried that I'd be pressured into drinking a lot of vodka, but thankfully our director takes a somewhat harder line about alcohol in school than do most around here, so the only thing we had was a glass of wine each, although I'm pretty sure it was actually cranberry juice. Also, I'm sad to say we didn't get a good picture of what was certainly my favorite game, wherein each contestant spun around in a circle fifteen times, and then, having gotten good and dizzy, had to spoon-feed an entire bowl of yogurt to a tremendously unfortunate woman. Phenomenal.

In other news, olympics season chugs on. This week we had round one of our school's primary olympics, which is taking place for the first time ever this year. I got to administer the listening and speaking portions of the exam, which was quite enjoyable. I love working with those little kids. They alway cheer me up. Particularly the little boy in the picture above. He had to tell me all about food. It was adorable. I have to admit that sometimes I have trouble not laughing at the cuteness of their word choice when speaking. Plus, they get so stressed about the whole thing, which only adds to the hilarity. And they always state the name of the subject about which they're speaking before they begin, like it were a title. As a result, many of their responses sounded almost like a modern poetry reading. For example:

my body.
eyes
lips
arms
[child looks down, distraught]
nose, nose, nose
[child bites lip, gazes up in despair]
nose

Absolutely brilliant. That kid would fit right in at Oberlin.

The weather continues to zig-zag its way toward warmth. Today was pretty nice. I had a long break around lunch time, so I walked Jagaa down to the river and let her frolic among some grazing cows, which was pretty funny. She's terrified of every living creature that isn't a human, but the cows were so slow and uninterested in her that she could hop around them barking and whatnot without any recourse. She felt pretty good about herself, as you can see at the bottom.

The nicest thing about today's weather happened later, however. Bob and I were walking home tonight when we happened to run into Geoff. We got into a conversation, and something about it just felt great. The topic was not particularly interesting, but for some reason I was absolutely loving it. About five minutes in, I realized that this was the first extended conversation I'd had outside in nearly half a year without wanting to kill myself. It was so refreshing! Just standing there and chatting as if it were the middle of summer and the sun were shining and we were in shorts and t-shirts. When I got home I checked the temperature, and it turns out it was still only 15°, but whatever. It was incredible.

Next week will be a welcome change from the bump and grind. Wednesday is the first day of our two-week long spring break. Also, on Sunday and/or Monday, Carolyn and Sarah, two of my friends from summer training in Bayandelger, will be coming for a week or so! They were both really close with Kaede this summer, and with me to a slightly lesser extent, so it'll be great to see them. Speaking of Kaede, I fly to UB the next Tuesday, and she's meeting me there! It still seems a long way away, but it's getting closer, and needless to say, I can't wait.

What a difference a year makes...

Story time. Tonight I was hanging out with the sitemates at Bob's place. Susanne was cooking us a delicious dinner of barbecue chicken, naan, sautéed green peppers, and onion rings. I had about ten minutes until it was ready, so I decided to run Jagaa out for a pee first. When I got outside, I found myself in the midst of what might have been the biggest snowstorm we've had all season. While Mongolia is quite cold, it is equally dry, so we get very little snowfall throughout the winter. Not only was this storm unusually heavy; it was also exceptionally beautiful. The sun had set a while earlier, but something about the way the apartment lights shone on the windy scene was quite breathtaking. Standing outside with Jagaa gets to be quite tiring, but sometimes I'm grateful that I get to be outside to appreciate something I would have otherwise missed. This was one of those times.

After a few minutes, Jagaa had done nothing but sniff around, but I continued to wait. Just then, from opposite directions, two young girls came skipping toward each other, screaming "goy yumaa!" and "yamar goy yum be!" among other exclamations, all of which basically translate to "this is so beautiful!" When they'd reached each other, they embraced with great affection, as Mongolians love to do, and they proceeded to dance and cheer and continue their litany of praise for the beauty of the night. Normally when I bring Jagaa out and she doesn't do her business right away, I begin counting to some arbitrary number in my head, after reaching which I will go back inside. Sixty or one hundred or occasionally two hundred. I was doing just that as this scene unfolded, but I became so caught up in the euphoria these girls were expressing that I completely lost count. Soon, two very young boys ran out and joined them. They all held hands and danced in a circle for some time. I tried to capture the scene with my camera, but the results of course did little justice.

Eventually, one of them noticed the foreigner with the little dog standing off to the side. Without exchanging any words, they ran over to me and grew captivated by Jagaa. As I've mentioned before, pets are a rarity in Mongolia, so I draw even more attention than usual when I have a leashed dog with me. However, because dogs are basically security guards in this country, most Mongolians are very frightened of them. The children, in spite of their fascination, were no exception. They'd move closer and whistle at Jagaa, which invariably caused her to bark, which in turn made them recoil and cry "eejee!" That's Mongolian for "my mother!" but it's basically used where we would say "oh my god!" Eventually, through my broken Mongolian, I convinced them that Jagaa was harmless, and it became clear that she was much more afraid of them than the other way around. I picked her up and calmed her down, and she allowed them to pet her. I decided to take some more pictures, and they were elated to pose for me. After each one I took, they demanded to have a look, to which they'd again say "goy yumaa!" and "yamar goy yum be!" They then requested to take a picture of Jagaa and me. It was pretty adorable. So adorable in fact, that I forgot all about dinner. Soon Trinh stuck his head out the window and called me in. While I was getting my food, I heard them saying my name, pleading that Jagaa and I come back outside and play with them again. Those of us inside laughed it off, and I told them I was eating. "Afterwards!" they insisted.


We sat down to dinner, but soon they'd discovered which door was Bob's and so of course they got to a-knocking. It was still cute, but we were eating, so Zoloo went over to try and avert the problem. She pretended to be the only person living in the apartment, claiming that she didn't know anyone named John and had no dog. All the while, Jagaa was of course barking in the background. She shut the door, but they did not relent. Trinh went to the door next and spoke to them in English, asserting that he knew no Mongolian. Then he switched into Cambodian, his mother tongue, which astounded them even further. Finally, he switched into Mongolian, which he's pretty good at. After shutting the door, they still weren't placated, so Bob went over and tried some Spanish on them. They were loving this multilinguistic assault, but of course they remained unappeased. Finally we shut off all the lights and laughed to ourselves until they went away.

I feel a bit overly sentimental posting this story here in its entirety, but for some reason, it feels very important to me. When it was happening, somewhere pretty early on I realized that I was experiencing what would become one of my most enduring and cherished memories from my time in this country, that the image of those children dancing in the windy snowscape was one that would stay with me the rest of my life. How appropriate that almost exactly one-year prior, I had been visiting Oberlin with some friends, and my mom had called me to tell me a large packet had arrived from the Peace Corps. She'd asked me if I'd wanted her to open it for me. I had. Inside was my invitation to serve for two years as an English teacher trainer in Mongolia. In the three hundred and sixty five days that have followed that moment, this country has consumed my life. Even before I arrived in June, perhaps especially before then, it was all I could think about. Since I've gotten here, it has grown into a complete and total reality, the norm, that to which everything else is compared. When I really think about life in the place I was born, America seems the foreign country. Of course, I miss my family and friends back home, but it's amazing how used to things you can get. I've built a life over here now as well, complete with great friends and a full-time job and routines and goals and thrills and sadnesses and a woman so wonderful I'm going to make her my wife. It's amazing to think that all of this has happened in so short a time, but it's even more amazing to think that after not so much more than another year, it will all have finished.

Suit Day!

Check us out! Lookin' pretty fly if I do say so myself. Us guys here in Dornod all got suits made (actually I just got an old one tailored) since they're pretty inexpensive around here, and then yesterday we went out to eat a fancy lunch together dressed in them. And then we came back to Bob's place and played ridiculous drinking games dressed in them. And then I got too drunk and now I feel awful today, though it's getting better. I'm pretty sure I ate a lot of raw brownie batter, which may or may not have contributed. Ah the stupid things one does when drunk. I think I'll lay off the stuff for a while now. I'm kind of a chameleon when it comes to drinking. If the people I'm around never imbibe, neither will I. If they enjoy getting nice and tipsy every weekend, as they do around here, I'll be right there with them. It's so easy to fall into that pattern out here. I love Dornod and I love Choibalsan and I love my friends, but unfortunately there's only so much to do for fun, especially in the bitter, dark cold of winter. So we drink. But it's getting to be a bit much for me. I'm gonna try and take it easy for a while. I never really loved the stuff to begin with. One or two beers is nice on a summer afternoon, and wine can be great with dinner, but that's all I need. I oughtta save a little more money now too.

Anyway, enough about that. What else is new? Perhaps my greatest joy this week has been Jagaa's continued development from a little brat into a good dog. At long last, she's on the verge of being completely housebroken! In the last six days or so, she's only pooped and peed inside a couple times. Some credit is due to my mom and sister here and their aforementioned mammoth Christmas package. It included a bag of treats which are easy to break into tiny pieces. I carry a bunch of them in my coat pocket and whenever she pees or poops outside, she gets one. At long last she's getting the picture. Additionally, I found out this week that a place in Dornod is equipped to spay her! I was getting anxious about trying to bring her into UB and figuring out where I could put her up while there. And, as if that weren't good news enough, they're not charging me! The woman who is going to do it teaches veterinary studies at the confoundingly named Technical Technological College in town, which is where Merrie works. She wants to do it as part of a lesson for her students. It sounds too good to be true, and I'm a bit concerned because of how few pets there are out here, which would imply that she probably doesn't do to many of these procedures, but I called the vet in UB, which is definitely reliable, and they said they come out here and do trainings for the local vets, and the local vets go into UB as well. They're gonna call her on Monday and make sure everything is going to be sterilized and the anesthesia will be properly administered, etc etc, but I think it's gonna work out!

In other news, the city olympics happened at my school this weekend. Ninth graders, eleventh graders, and teachers from around Choibalsan took the tests. I helped out with reading the listening sections and grading, and Zoloo took first prize of all the teachers in the city! She's pretty excited about that, and it means she gets to participate in the aimag olympics in a few weeks. It's gonna be study study study until then. But hopefully she'll win that one too and then go on to nationals! Also, the creative writing competition Kaede and I are working on is coming together nicely. Students will write their essays next week. Hopefully as many of them will show up as have said they would. It'll be nice to get past that step, but there still remains a lot to be done before we're finished in April. Kaede's been doing most of it so far, so she's getting pretty exhausted, but I hope to pull more of my own weight in these upcoming weeks. Fortunately, we get to be together for a lot of that last part. I go into UB at the end of March for another VAC meeting. As you may remember, VAC is like the student council of Peace Corps. That'll be during our spring break, so I hope to get out to Arkhangai and stay with her for a week or so afterwards. It's still a few weeks away, but we're of course quite excited about it.

Kaede and I have also been hammering out a lot of our summer plans, or trying to. We'd like to participate in some sort of project for the first half. Right now we're hoping to get selected to teach English for three weeks to various tradespeople. That could take place in one of several cities around the country, but we (or I, I should say... Kaede's fairly indifferent) would like to be placed in Uvs aimag, way in the mountainous lake-ridden northwest part of the country, so we can get a chance to see some place new. We'll probably find out in a few weeks. If that doesn't work out, we might do a summer camp down in our friend Sarah's town in Sukhbaatar. Either way, after we're finished, we're gonna head back to the states for our wedding! We'll probably spend the majority of our time in Washington state, where Kaede's dad lives, but I'm hoping to pop home to the east coast for a week at some point. It's pretty crazy... neither of us expected to go back during our time here, but I'm sure you know how plans change, and we're getting excited about it now that it's happening. Hopefully I'll see as many of your smiling faces as possible while we're there!

One more video!

...seeing as it actually is Peace Corps's birthday today. Well, not in Mongolia anymore, as you can see from the date above, but it still is back in America. Anyway here's a neat video made by Peace Corps itself about the 50th anniversary. Somewhat cheesy, but all in all a good summary of the program and its progress over the last half a century. Peace Corps Mongolia even makes an appearance at around 3:20! Watch for the old woman spinning the Buddhist prayer wheels.