Goodbye for a bit?

Hey faithful readers. So since last I wrote I've mostly been having A GREAT TIME. Everyone here is so cool, I'm starting to learn some Mongolian, and each day is filled with exciting new mountains to climb, people to meet, words to learn, foods to eat, etc etc etc. But as much as things have been changing, that's all about to look like diddlysquat. For tomorrow afternoon, we all leave for our host families. Mine is in a very small town about two hours east of Zuunmod. I'm mostly excited to meet them (all the M20s and M19s seem to have really treasured their host family experiences), but I am a bit worried about the fact that I can pretty much only say three things to them: "Hello," "What is your name?", and "I like apples." I'm sure my vocabulary will be increasing greatly in the weeks to come.

Although I'm supermegapumped for the next stage, our group of seventy-five volunteers is going to be dividing into six parts, so I'll be saying goodbye to a lot of the friends I've made. That's kinda sad. I'll see them again of course, but not so much, and never again so easily. We've been having a lot of fun. Last night we climbed up on one of the hills near town to play frisbee, drink beer, and watch the sunset. It was indescribable. Afterwards, on our way back down, we were throwing the disc around and half a dozen little kids ran over to play with us. They were so cute and they went wild whenever we tossed it to them. Most eventually wound up tackling fellow PCT Brian, and he had quite a time extricating himself from their tiny hands. They grow 'em tough out here on the steppes.

A few summations. Classes have been a little overwhelming but very helpful. The food is still pretty good, but it is a lot of the same basic ingredients recycled into different forms, so I can see myself getting tired of it before long. The weather has been surprisingly rainy this week, but that's okay. When that blue sky comes out, it's all worth it, and the landscape still possesses a striking beauty in the low-hanging clouds.

So originally it sounded like internet would be hard to come by in my host community, but today one of the teachers implied that I might have some access. If I do, I'm sure I'll be posting here and there, depending on how busy I am. If not, this'll probably be the last post until July! Maybe. It's hard to say.

Well I guess I won't be playing the "got your nose!" game for a while...

...that's apparently one of the things that some volunteers do with their host families as an ice breaker, and Mongolians find it quite offensive. Haha.

In other news, I MADE IT! It's been wicked fun so far. I slept like a baby on the flight to Ulaanbaatar. When we got there it was quite rainy. We got off the plane and thankfully no bags were lost NOR did my hot sauce explode. Good news, amirite? When we exited into the main terminal, there were soooo many current PCVs and they were screaming and cheering and welcoming us to Mongolia and it was such a wonderful feeling. We loaded our bags onto a truck and stood around talking in the rain for an hour or so. We got to ask the current volunteers all sorts of questions about service and how their experiences have been. When we finally arrived around midnight at the dorm where we're staying in Zuunmod, we were pretty beat. I took a freezing shower, the first of many unpleasant bathing experiences in the years to come, and then I crashed. Although the beds weren't really the most comfortable, we were all so exhausted that I slept quite soundly. Nevertheless, jet lag had just about everyone up and kicking around 5 AM.. Hopefully that won't last too long.

After getting my bearings and arranging my belongings, we had a surprisingly tasty breakfast in the dorms. It was some sort of sausage and toast and mashed potatoes and, believe it or not, buckwheat. Then we went outside and played some frisbee, the perfect sport for a country this open. It's a beautiful day here, and this is a fucking gorgeous country. You can see for miles all around, and there are hills and mountains lining the horizon. The sky is enormous and blue, just like they said. It's supposed to rain sometime today, but it's almost 5:30 now and there's still no sign of it.

After frisbee, we had an orientation session and then were issued our water filters (so necessary), our mega-intense sleeping bags, and our first couple weeks of walk around allowance. We get a budget of about 2000 tugriks per day, which converts to about a buck and a half. Meals are taken care of, so there's nothing we really have to buy, but it's still pretty amazing to think that we can live comfortably with only that much to spend. Afterwards we played some more frisbee and then had lunch, which was also surprisingly delicious. It was a burger-like patty with an egg on top, as well as some rice, carrots, and cabbage. Oh, and there was a fatoush-like salad to start. Apparently we've been eating stuff on the higher end of the culinary spectrum here so far, but still, I'm glad to be enjoying the food so much. After lunch we went for a tour of Zuunmod. It's a pretty quaint little town, and it's filled with the cutest children on earth. They smile to excess and strike sassy poses when we walk by.

Anyway, that's pretty much what's up so far. My anxieties about this whole experience have all but disappeared, and I'm pretty much just having a blast at this point.

Bayartai!

Greetings from Sunny South Korea!

Hey everybody. So I guess I lied when I said my next post would be from Mongolia, because here I am sitting on the floor in Incheon International Airport in South Korea, making a post, waiting for the final leg of this four-part plane trip, the one that will take me to the Land of the Blue Sky. I figured I ought to take advantage of internet while I have it, since I'm not sure quite what the next few days are going to be like.

Since I last posted I've done several things.

1. Finished packing. What a bitch.
2. Went to Denny's in Portland with my mom, my sister, Renee, Peter, Jake, and Ted Gill for my last Maine meal. I got chicken fried steak and eggs. It was delicious.
3. Said goodbye to all those people. I have to admit I got a bit choked up at the airport, and walking through security all on my own, I suddenly realized just how daunting this adventure could be.
4. Flew across the fucking country. In case you didn't realize, it's really big. Oh, and when we got to the jetport, we found out that my original flight to DC had been canceled due to fog. Fortunately they stuck me on a couple Continental flights that got me to San Fran via Newark only half an hour behind schedule.
5. Met a ton of the other PCTs (but not all of them... there's seventy of us!) and did the whole staging thing. Training was kinda boring at times, since it rehashed a lot of the stuff I've already read in the literature the PC sent me, but it's been reaaaaaaaaally nice to meet all my fellow M21s and to see that they're going through the same things I am, that they have the same anxieties, and that we're all gonna be jusssssst fine.
6. Partied like a rockstar in San Fran. Well, not quite, but we got some dinner and beers and hit up a nice little hookah bar. As a result of said debauchery, I only got three hours of sleep, but it was a fun way to spend my last night in America for twenty-seven months.
7. Sat through a twelve hour flight to Korea. It actually was much better than I feared it would be. I managed to get a couple well-placed naps in, and I was talking so much with fellow PCTs that I never got all that bored.

So yeah, that's what's new. I'll try to post as soon as I can once I'm in Mongolia. It's coming right up! Love you all. Miss you all.

Jumping out of planes

In just ten hours, I'll be on an airplane to DC, and then forty minutes later I'll be on an airplane to San Francisco, and then the next day I'll be on an airplane to Seoul, and then three hours later I'll be on a plane to FUCKING MONGOLIA WHERE I'LL BE LIVING IN THAT YURT OMGEEEE IM FREEEAAAKING OUT!!!!!!

Actually I'm not really stressing all that bad. The last month has been awesome. I'm pretty sure I've managed to tie up all my loose ends, I've done all the stuff I wanted to do, and I've seen most of the people I wanted to see. I did my 9K two weekends ago (it went great!), I went skydiving (UNBELIEVABLE), I did some great hikes in and around my home state (always lovely), and I went camping with friends and family for a weekend at Moosehead Lake (my favorite place on earth, so that obviously rocked). My mom and sister came up for that last one and will be here through my departure tonight, so it's been great to be surrounded by the people I love.

My last few hours at home will be filled with eating and packing. I've got everything I need; I just have to figure out how to put it into my bags in the best way. My mom is currently cooking my favorite food on earth, fried haddock. She's also making her famous mac & cheese, which is probably my second favorite food on earth. Needless to say I'm in heaven. I have to be at the airport at 4 AM, so we decided to have a little gathering at Denny's beforehand, seeing as it's the only place open 24 hours around here. How better to remember Maine?

I'll get into San Fran at 11:20 AM, and then it's staging orientation until the evening. I'm excited to meet everyone and for the adventure ahead, but it's still pretty surreal. I don't have any idea what I'm getting into, but I'm pumped anyway. Good news for you guys though... this blog is probably going to get a lot more interesting. See you guys later! The next time I post, I'll be in MONGOLIA!!!!! LOVE YA!

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).

Get ready, cuz here I come!

I never met a country that makes me feel the way Mongolia do,
YOU'RE ALL RIGHT!
Whenever I'm asked who makes my dreams real, I say Mongolia do,
YOU'RE OUT OF SIGHT!
So fee, fi, fo fum,
Look out Mongolia, cuz here I come.

Alright so the song doesn't work perfectly, but whenever I'm getting ready for anything, I can't help but think of that Temptations tune. And that's pretty much all I've been doing in my spare moments the past few weeks. You may or may not have noticed the page I put up on this here blog about the things I need to get between now and departure, and I've been spending a lot of my time trying to figure out just how I'm gonna get them, and which ones I can do without. I received my sweet hiking backpack from Eagle Creek yesterday. As mentioned on that page, lots of places give us PCVs a discount, so I got that $230 bag for only $115! Awesome.

I've also been reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. It's really interesting and is only furthering my opinion that GK was fucking awesome and has been mistreated by the history books ever since. Highly recommended.

In other non-Mongolia news, I'm now in my last week of work in Central PA. I'm training my sister to replace me, so it's nice to be a little family for a while out here in Carlisle. This weekend I'm making one last trip to Baltimore and DC to say some goodbyes, and then I'll head up to Maine to work at Handy Boat! Very excited about that, even though I just got back from six days up there on Sunday. Aside from the run (for which I finally raised my $1000; thanks to everyone who donated!!!), I've also planned some camping and even a day of skydiving in the next month. May as well leave the US with a (hopefully non-literal) bang, amirite?

Mongolia on My Mind

Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia. Such is the litany which now comprises the majority of my thoughts. As you can see in the picture above, I couldn't even go to the Museum of Natural History in DC without pointing out Ulaanbaatar on every map I came across. I guess it'd probably be a little strange if I weren't thinking nonstop about the totally foreign land where I'll be spending the next two years of my life, but I'm a little surprised by just how infatuated I've become. I guess it makes more sense when coupled with the mundaneness of life in Central PA.

Needless to say, I've been reading everything about the Land of the Blue Sky that I can get my hands on. I tore through what documents the PC sent me. I've even watched a couple excellent Mongolian films (The Story of the Weeping Camel, a documentary about a nomadic family living in the Gobi Desert, and Mongol, the first part of an epic trilogy telling the story of Genghis Khan's life; both were nominated for Academy Awards and can be found on Netflix). It's been really fun, and I'm pumped that I'll soon be living in such an awesome place. Here's ten of my favorite facts I've recently learned, in no particular order:

• Mongolia has one of the highest average elevations (about 5100 ft) of any country!
• In Mongolia, if you accidentally step on someone or kick their feet, you must shake his hand immediately!
• John Wayne once starred as Genghis Khan in Howard Hughes' 1956 film, The Conqueror. It is considered one of the worst movies ever made, and because it was shot downwind from a nuclear test site in Nevada, nearly half of the cast and crew (including John Wayne and Agnes Moorehead) developed cancer!
• Peljidiin Genden, Mongolia's ninth Prime Minister, disagreed with Stalin over how to deal with the Buddhist monks in his nation (Stalin wanted to purge them; Genden didn't), and he even charged the Soviet leader with "Red Imperialism." In response, Stalin kicked Genden's walking stick! Right out from under him! What an asshole! So Genden slapped Stalin across the face, breaking his pipe and yelling "You bloody Georgian, you have become a virtual Russian czar!" Can you guess how Stalin reacted to that? If you guessed that Crazy Old Joe had Genden killed, you're correct!
• The common English term "hurray" originated as the Mongol battle cry. Doesn't seem to mean the same thing to us, does it? Personally, if I saw a whole bunch of people running at me with swords yelling "hurray!!!" I probably would think they were just being silly. But then they'd kill me. Just like every other chump in their path!
• Genghis Khan wasn't a total dick after all! Don't get me wrong, he wasn't a saint exactly, but he was no bloodthirsty mindless sociopath either. History textbooks fail again!
• For every one Mongolian, there are THIRTEEN HORSES! WTF!?!
• One delicacy of Mongolia's oh-so-unappetizing cuisine is known as boodog, which is really just a euphemism for blowtorched marmot. That's right. You heard me. Blowtorched. Marmot. I don't think anyone needs to hear more about this particular oddity, but it's just too bizarre not to go on. Anyway I'm the one who's potentially going to have to eat this stuff. Quoting from Lonely Planet's guide to Mongolia:

  This summer delight first involves pulling the innards out of the neck of a marmot. The carcass is then stuffed full of scalding rocks and the neck cinched up with wire. The bloated animal is then thrown upon a fire (or blowtorched) to burn the fur off the outside while the meat is cooked from within. The finished product vaguely resembles a balloon with paws.

  As a bonus, apparently handling the dead animals is the number one cause of Bubonic Plague in Mongolia. Hurray!
• Khövsgöl Nuur, while not the largest lake in Mongolia, is the second oldest lake in the world and contains sixty-five percent of the nation's fresh water, and two percent of the world's!
• It is estimated that about one in every twelve men living in the former Mongolian empire (one-fifth of the world's land area) is descended from Genghis Khan, for a total of about sixteen million great-great-great-great-etc. grandsons! And that's just the men! The moral of the story? GK was a ho. Fo sho.

In a recent comment, the lovely Anna Santo requested more details about what exactly I'll be doing in Mongolia. I don't know how much anyone else cares, but I'd do anything for Anna, so here goes.

I don't know that many specifics, but my job description is English teacher trainer. For the first ten weeks, however, I'll be in intensive pre-service training with all the other PCVs in my cohort. I'm not positive where it will be, but I think I read somewhere that it'll be in the town of Darkhan, Mongolia's third largest city, which is in the north, not far from the Russian border. While there, I'll be living with a host family, which ought to expedite learning of the language and culture. After PST ends, we'll all be sent to our permanent sites, the places where we'll live for the next two years. These will have been determined a few weeks prior. I have no idea where I'll be sent, but it will most likely be a city of moderate size, which for Mongolia means fifteen to forty thousand people. There are three kinds of sites at which I could be placed:

1. Foreign Language Institutes (FLI)—These are basically colleges. Should I get sent to an FLI, I'd be leading classes of fifteen to twenty prospective teachers aged seventeen to twenty-two.
2. Provincial Education Departments—There is an Education Department in every aimag which oversees the administration of education for the whole province. If I were placed at one of these, I'd be aiding the officials in improving the quality of English instruction in that aimag. Apparently this job includes some traveling into the countryside, which makes it sound like the best possibility to me!
3. Secondary school complexes—In a secondary school complex, which is a fancy term for a high school, I'd be working with current English teachers to help them improve their own skills. I'd also be doing some private tutoring on the side. Judging from the description alone, I'm least excited about this one.

As in my initial country placement, I will have some say on where in Mongolia I get to go, but it's not their first concern. Based on what I've read so far, I'd like to be placed somewhere in the central to western part of the country. That way I could be in the mountains, which I so love, and yet not too far from Ulaanbaatar. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Two Months!!!

That pic would probably be more appropriate if I weren't holding the fish skeletons, but it was the closest thing I could find to a photo of me looking excited and terrified... which are the two emotions I'm feeling right now since, two months from today, I'LL BE ON MY WAY TO MONGOLIA!!! Well, more or less... I'll be on my way to stateside staging. I technically won't leave for Mongolia until two months from tomorrow.

Anyway, this isn't much of a real post; I just wanted to mention that. And also this: ever since I began considering the Peace Corps in earnest, which was right around the beginning of my frosh year at Oberlin, I've tried to get a grasp on just how long twenty-seven months is. My main strategy has been to consider what I was doing twenty-seven months prior, and what had happened in the meantime. Back at the beginning of my college career, that interval seemed absolutely, unbelievably, nigh-on-insurmountably enormous. In the two and a quarter years that passed between July 2003 and September 2005, I'd gotten my first job, learned to drive a car, traveled to France and Spain for a two-week exchange program, gotten my first girlfriend, applied to college, graduated from high school, said good-bye to old friends, and made new ones at Oberlin, where I was now a student. I couldn't imagine spending that much time in a place about which I knew nothing. If such a huge amount had changed about me in that time, all while basically living at home, would I even be able to survive the same interval in a foreign country, living a life without many of the comforts and conveniences, not to mention people, I take for granted back home?

Those questions are still valid, but at least now the amount of time seems less daunting. In the twenty-seven months between January 2007 and now, I spent a semester living in Egypt and studying at the American University in Cairo, made some new friends there, saw a lot of awesome new places in the Middle East, lived in Boston for a summer, finished out my time at Oberlin, had a six-month relationship begin and end... and then there was graduation. Since then, besides the road trip, not all that much has happened in my life (as the previous post will tell you). Plus, there's that whole phenomenon where, as you age, the same amount of time (one year, two years, twenty-seven months...) comprises a lesser portion of your life as a whole. As a child, a year seems like a whole lifetime. Nowadays, it feels like it was just yesterday I was leaving for Cairo.

Point is, the mix of excitement and nervous terror has changed quite a bit in the last five years. I still feel both knowing that I'll be leaving in two months, but (thankfully), I feel a lot more of the former.