Genghis Jhan's Last Ride

It's over. Actually has been for more than a month. We finished up a bit earlier than intended, but we managed to say sad, heartfelt goodbyes to just about all the most important people we came to know and love over the last two years. Our sitemates were extremely helpful in taking over projects that we didn't quite have time to finish up ourselves. Conveniently, the time we chose to leave was right around our Close of Service conference, the last big meeting of our group of M21s. Going to that actually made me feel a lot better about leaving early. All our friends were heading back to site afterwards, but you could tell that most of them had checked out and were returning primarily to wrap things up and say their own goodbyes. There are many exceptions, of special note being the record number of volunteers in our group who have decided to stay a third year, either independently or with Peace Corps. We're very proud to have been part of such an impressive group of human beings. As the Mongols would put it, M21s fo' life!

It's been strange but nice to be back for good. There are lots of things we missed about America, but on the other hand, we've had a lot of time to realize how wonderful our lives were in Mongolia. We are different, dare I say better, people for having spent two years there. It's a time I couldn't forget if I wanted to. After all, I have just about the two most wonderful souvenirs possible: a wife and a cat. The former is admittedly a bit more substantial than the latter, I know, but we're very pleased to have our furry friend here with us all the same.

So now it's time to figure out the future. In a couple weeks, Kaede starts the process of finishing her Master's Degree, and I've been studying for my Coast Guard Captain's License. Hopefully I'll be able to score a sweet job on the water down in California. Kaede will finish her Master's in December, and then we aren't completely sure what our next step will be. Some combination of school, work, and/or living abroad again.

Welp, this is it: the end of Genghis Jhan. Thanks to all of you who've read and commented and sent your love and support over the last two years. I know I became pretty remiss on posting in the second year, but having this blog was always a major source of comfort and joy for me. I hope you enjoyed it too. There's a good chance that I'll have to take it offline in the next few months. Or at least make it private, as apparently I'm less likely to be hired if a Google search for "John Russell Mongolia" returns "That Piece of Shit John Russell" (who'd've thought?), but that seems appropriate. Disappearing without a trace, any and all tracks trampled into chaos by hundreds of horses whose riders were then killed, just like the great leader whose name inspired it.

Sain yawaarai, hairtai naizuud. Daraa uulzie.

Pig Cancer

Happy spring! It's just about upon us out here. In the afternoon, snow and ice are beginning to melt, though they freeze again the minute the sun goes down. Nature is a cruel zamboni.

As I mentioned before, we're in the thick of the holiday season. Last month was Valentine's Day back home, and that day is beginning to take hold here, but of course it was a week later that the mother of all Mongol holidays hit: Tsagaan Sar. Fortunately, we were only invited to a few homes. I say fortunately because of the amount of drinking and gorging that is expected of us everywhere we go during Tsagaan Sar. However, we managed to have a pretty nice time. In truth, Tsagaan Sar is a massive headache for most Mongolians. You can't control how big or small you want it to be, let alone opt out of it, as some Americans do at Christmas, which would be our most analogous holiday. Every home has to be ready for people, anyone really, to just show up. Ready means filled to the gills with food, vodka, and even a personal present for each person who visits you. It's tough not to feel a little bad, especially as foreigners, when we show up to an elaborate event that has taken more than a week to prepare (and often a bank loan to finance), eat and drink to a sinful degree, and then receive a little present on top of it all! Oh well, as the French would say, тэр амьдрал байна.


When we aren't celebrating holidays, we're preparing for exams. Just before Tsagaan Sar, the director and managers told me to stop my team-teaching and observations and focus 100% on preparing students and teachers for the Olympics and Concourse. I'm sure I've explained what both of these are before. If you've forgotten, just know that they're ridiculous and poorly made tests that are absolutely critical to the success of students, teachers, administration... well, just about every facet of the Mongolian education system. Which is a real shame.

Unfortunately, everything is so crazy that the students and teachers barely have time to meet with me, which wasn't such a bad thing, since last week my jugulodigrastic lymph nodes swelled up to a degree more disgusting than alarming. It all started when I shaved my beard for the first time since autumn. That afternoon, I was caressing my newly shorn neck when I noticed the little guys weren't so little anymore. I thought nothing of it, but the next morning, they were so big that swallowing was just a tad uncomfortable. On top of that, I looked like that sex offender from It's Always Sunny. Within an hour their size had reduced almost to that of the previous day, but all week this pattern was repeated. Super swollen in the morning, less so in the evening. I talked to Peace Corps Medical and my lovely/brilliant aunt and uncle. No one was very concerned. I was just to wait it out. So by the time we saw all our sitemates that weekend, we'd turned it into a big joke. That evening at dinner, we were trying to explain just what was going on to some Mongolians, and they started chattering away in their own language about it, trying to reach a diagnosis. I became alarmed when I heard the word "gakhai," which means pig. I asked them to confirm this is what they'd said, and they nodded, adding that the proper Mongolian name for swollen lymph nodes is "pig cancer." How quaint.

Anyway, they're nearly back to normal now. Must've been some kind of divine retribution for being too lazy to shave all winter.

That's about all for now. We're really enjoying the end of the season. Every day without long underwear is a happy day for me. We've already begun preparations for the most kickass St. Patty's Day party ever to hit Mongolia. We started corning our own beef a couple nights ago (Baagii helped by eating all the skin), and we're gonna go all out and buy some Jameson's and Bailey's. If you're in the neighborhood on March 17, stop by!

John the Red-Nosed Volunteer

...had a very frostbitten nose
and if you ever poked it
he'd swat your hand and whimper quietly...

Actually it's technically just frostnipped. And it's pretty much gone. I lost my scarf a month ago or so and decided it wasn't worth buying a new one. Last year, the coldest month was December, so I figured it was all downhill from there anyway. Well, this year January was a lot colder, and one day last week while walking to school, my face getting colder and colder, I felt an abrupt pain in my nose, like someone had just punched me with a very hot fist. By the time I got inside, I'd forgotten about it, but a day or two later, that spot had turned bright red. Fortunately things are warming up around here, and Merrie lent me a scarf just in case.


The school year has progressed out of the first semester, when it's possible to get some work done, and into the second, where there are holidays and concerts and standardized tests every two minutes which make it nearly impossible to do anything except get stressed and frustrated, or, as I prefer, just stay home and watch movies with the wife and cat. In the last two weeks, we've had six performances, five of which were on the same day. We're raising money for new chairs and audio equipment to put in our auditorium. I have to bite my tongue whenever they tell me this, as I feel there are many more obvious places any money we raise ought to go. For instance, it would be nice to have classrooms warm enough that students didn't need to wear their jackets inside, but I suppose it's hard to argue with a killer stereo system.

Lucky for me, I have my lovely wife to come home to, as well as her inimitable cooking. Mongolia has made us both better chefs, but she's the true master around here. Our friend Pico was visiting from the countryside again, and on his birthday, Kaede made bacon and ricotta ravioli, squash soup, a fresh garden salad, garlic bread, and red velvet cake from real beets. I was supposed to help with all this, but his birthday happened to fall on the day we had to perform that same damned concert five times.

We're glad February is here. While things at school can be difficult, a lot of our other projects are going well. We launch a new group of Access students this week, we just gave a practice TOEFL exam, and the International Creative Writing Contest is only a few weeks away. Perhaps most exciting is Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year and biggest holiday of the year, which will happen at the end of the month. Last year, we didn't get much of a chance to celebrate it, so we're looking forward to round two. Kaede and I are having some nice new Mongolian jackets tailored just for the occasion. Very exciting.

In other holiday news, last Friday was Teacher's Day. Every school has a huge party and every teacher gets hilariously wasted, and of course we offered the TOEFL exam the next morning, much to the groggy, hungover dismay of many of our particpants. At our celebration, I was unexpectedly given an award for using good methodology over the three to five years I've been working. Doesn't really make sense, but oh well. Can't complain about a nifty medal!

Birthdays for Baagii, Bullets for the Rest

Kaede was walking to school this week when she heard a bang. A moment later, a whimpering dog ran out from between two nearby buildings, slipped on the ice, and collapsed. Blood filled his mouth and flowed from a fresh bullet wound. Soon thereafter, I received a call from my very upset wife. I did my best to console her, but what can you really say in that sort of situation? On her way home a few hours later, the corpse was still there, as well as those of other dogs. I'm sure Kaede would not classify this as one of her better days in Peace Corps.

The dog shootings were among the first things veteran volunteers told us about when we arrived in Mongolia nineteen months ago. Once a year, the police walk around town and shoot all the stray dogs they find. In smaller communities with no real police force, teachers and other employees of the state are fined a nominal amount if they do not kill a dog, although I should add that I've only heard this latter anecdote secondhand. Either way, in a poor country where spaying and neutering are virtually unheard of and often, ironically, viewed as cruel, this is how you control the dog population.

And there's no doubt that the dog population needs controlling. Strays are everywhere in this country, and while most would not harm a human, rabies is also a problem. When they start roaming in packs, even the heartiest of volunteers can't help but get a little nervous. Most Mongolians are downright terrified of dogs, and considering how many stories I've heard of people, natives and foreigners alike, getting bitten, it's not surprising.

Still, it's easy to judge Mongolia for this, and it got even easier this week. What could be more cruel than shooting an innocent dog in broad daylight? Often with children or the elderly right there? Nonetheless, I never stay long in my ivory tower before I recall that at least as many pets are killed every day in America. A lot more, actually: one every eight seconds according to the Humane Society's website. We just have the luxury of shelters and needles so that this can be done behind closed doors in a manner we deem humane. I wonder, if it got to a point where our communities couldn't afford these sorts of services anymore, how long we'd let strays roam our streets before we started tolerating, or even calling for, their destruction, public or otherwise.

And of course, Mongolians don't relish these dog-killing days. Most find it very disturbing, but few would call it unnecessary. They wish it were carried out better, sure, but in general, these people are much more comfortable facing death than we are. Considering nearly half of the population still herds, most Mongolians begin witnessing animal slaughter from a young age. In a country where vegetables are still a bit of a novelty, eating meat is all but compulsory, and Mongolians have come to terms with that, in spite of the bloodshed it requires. Most of these people cannot afford to ignore this reality, and perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

In America, we eat meat and exterminate strays, but we never have to face it. We get clean cities with empty streets and restaurants that sell juicy hamburgers, and we never even have to think about what our lifestyle requires. Of course, nowadays many Americans are turning their attention to just that, and some of our practices are improving as a result, but I think we could learn a lot from Mongolia. Perhaps Michael Pollan should take a vacation here.

On a brighter subject, it was Baagii's birthday recently! Happy birthday Baagii! Well, it wasn't technically his birthday (that's probably sometime in the late summer), but it was a year from the day the little guy followed us into our apartment. For his special day, he got some extra delicious food (see below), a new toy, and continued status as one of the luckiest pets around, whether in Mongolia, the states, or anywhere else in this dog-fearing world.

Y2K12

Happy New Year! We had a wonderful time seeing it in here in Choibalsan. It's a humble little city with nowhere near the organization required to have an official fireworks display, but with China barely fifty miles away, there's plenty of supplies for amateurs to set them off. Our apartment has a pretty decent view of downtown, so all the sitemates plus Zoloo came over and we had quite an hors-d'oeuvre potluck/game night while waiting for the display. I actually think I prefer the haphazard, mostly premature show as opposed to the absurdly overblown and money-wasting jamborees they throw in pretty much every American city.

I wish I had a picture or two to show you (there's one from last year at the bottom of this post), buuuut, well, as the title of this post suggests, there's been a bit of a technological meltdown around here. It was hinted at around the time we got back to Mongolia after our leave when my camera stopped working. Sometimes I can get it to take pictures, but it was getting too frustrating, so I started using Kaede's. Then, last Wednesday, our friend Pico came in from the countryside demanding karaoke, and who was I to say no to a Hudoo Rat? I brought the camera and got a little drunk, and the next day I couldn't find it anywhere. I feel really bad, but luckily Kaede didn't care too much for it. It certainly affects me more, since, as you are probably aware, I'm rather fond of taking pictures. Furthermore, there were some photos from various Christmas festivities which I stupidly had not transferred onto my computer yet, so I guess they're gone (Krista took the one up top, which features Kaede and me having made allowances for some gastrointestinal expansion following our Xmas piglet roast).

Around the same time, this old Acer laptop, which has given me enough trouble already over the last three-and-a-half years, started randomly turning off or giving me the blue screen of death whenever it got jostled even a tad. It's not quite the end of the road yet, but, just to illustrate, I'm stretched out in an extremely uncomfortable position from the couch to reach the keyboard and type this entry so that I don't have to move it from the position in which it was situated on the couch when Kaede and I recently watched Scrooged, which was a major disappointment, incidentally. C'mon Bill Murray. You can do better than that.

I keep telling myself there are much bigger things to worry about in life than computers and cameras, but it's hard not to be bummed when you're living such an exciting chapter of your life, and entering 2012 only amplifies that sensation. Last year was the only full year of our lives during which we'll have been Peace Corps volunteers, and this year is the one in which we'll finish and figure out what's next. Unbelievable.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that you have high hopes for this next year. Шинэ жилийн баярын мэнд хүргэе!