Peace Corps is turning 50!

Fifty years ago on Tuesday, then president John F. Kennedy announced the creation of the Peace Corps. Don't believe me? Well maybe you'll listen to our mutual friend YouTube:


Pretty crazy. Especially when you think about how much has changed. Volunteers in the sixties legitimately had to say goodbye to their lives and families and pretty much go without contact for two full years. Meanwhile, here I am blogging for all of you while listening to an album that was released a couple months ago and snacking on pretzels dipped in Gulden's honey mustard, both of which I purchased in Choibalsan. Sheesh, when I put it like that I really sound like a cop-out.

Anyway, here's another interesting video about it:


"Backwards and depressed areas..." Ha!

On top of that, 2011 marks the twenty year anniversary of Peace Corps Mongolia. Pretty exciting time to be a Peace Corps volunteer anywhere, especially here. Although I'm a bit surprised by how little seems to be going on to celebrate these milestones. I guess all of us volunteers are all pretty far flung, so the summer would be the most practical time for Peace Corps Mongolia to celebrate, in which case such an event, were it to happen, probably hasn't been planned yet. I'll keep you all posted.

The last week has been fine, I suppose. Our heat wave came to an end, though the Eternal Blue Sky was merciful enough not to drop temps too far below zero, and it's supposed to get above freezing again toward the end of this week. I went to work and fed Jagaa and cleaned up her poo and skyped with Kaede and ate tuna melts and played DDR, believe it or not. I also worked on the creative writing competition I'm helping Kaede with. I'm surprised and pleased by how much interest it's generating here in Dornod. Let's hope we can keep it up.

Anyway, I guess that about does it. Don't forget to have a drink to JFK and Peace Corps on Tuesday! They're the reason I'm not unemployed or falling deeper and deeper into academic-related debt back in the states right now.

Liquid water!!!

And not even inside! Today the mercury rose above freezing for the first time since early November, and boy oh boy weren't we glad to see it. The whole town came alive: children playing in the street, grandmas chatting on their stoops, dogs frolicking in puddles, you get the idea. Yesterday it was almost as warm as it was today, so Bob, Geoff, Trinh, Susanne, Jagaa, and I made the most of it and went on a three-hour long expedition to the Khalkh Gol Pilot's Monument on the east side of town to watch the sunset. It was so liberating to be comfortable outside for such a long time. You can see all of them enjoying the weather as the sun went down in the above picture. I only wore one layer of socks and no long underwear at all! I'd heard PCVs talk about how they'd swear off layering as soon as the first vaguely warm days arrived, no matter how cold it might get afterwards. This seemed silly to me, but now that I've had to spend hours upon hours out of the last few months getting ready to go outside even for the shortest amount of time, I understand entirely. To be honest, getting dressed was the worst part of the winter for me. Once you're out there, assuming you put enough on, the cold really wasn't that bad. What sucked was the five to ten minutes you had to spend getting ready in order to be even remotely comfortable. So yeah, the walk was very welcome indeed. And it was nice for once to be able to give Jagaa the kind of physical stimulation she really needs. If only I had time to make a nice big walk like that every day.

I've spent the last week and a half gearing up for the Olympics, which, after living in Mongolia for two years, will always mean nationwide secondary school competition to me before worldwide athletic games. Every spring, students across Mongolia compete in a variety of subjects to determine who is the best. There are comparable events in the states, such as Academic Decathlon, but none of them bear nearly the level of significance for our education system as the Olympics do around here. Normal classes are rearranged or even missed entirely to allow the best students to prepare for the Olympics. Needless to say, I'm pretty busy helping our best students with their English from this point on. TEFL volunteers are worth having if only for this one time of the year. As ridiculous as this whole brouhaha may seem, tutoring is a welcome change of pace from my normal work, especially since I get to work with the best and most motivated students. The competition occurs on three levels. The school's will be the first week in March, the aimag's will be the last, and the nation's will be some time after that.

On Friday, I picked up from the post office what may well have been the largest package ever to be delivered to this remote corner of the world from America. It was a Christmas package from my mom and sister, a bit behind schedule, but still very much welcome. After getting a good workout carrying it home, I tore the thing open and reveled in the glory of board games, candy, a lunch box, magazines, dish rags, socks, dog treats, scented candles, a guitar humidifier, Rudolph boxers, Christmas lights, a mini-Christmas tree, horseradish mustard, and FIVE different kinds of peanut butter. It was quite nice. Unfortunately, I had to leave my apartment soon thereafter, and I failed to hide everything adequately. I got home that night, tipsy from singing karaoke with the gang, to puddles of chocolatey brown puke all over the carpet. Jagaa had gotten a hold of a pound of chocolate chips, and she'd eaten the whole bag. Fortunately, she was fine, which is more than could have been said for me. I couldn't really be angry at her, though. Of course she was gonna eat a bag of chocolate chips if I left it in reach. I grumpily cleaned it up and went to bed. Since then I've spent a lot of time getting this dump in order. That little turd is getting bigger and more capable of pulling stuff off tables and eating or attempting to eat it, which means I have to stop leaving stuff on tables. Ah the woes of becoming responsible.

!تحيا مصر

This isn't a political blog by any stretch, but I'm just so filled with joy at what has happened in Egypt today that I had to express it in every way I could. It's amazing that I was there only three years ago, and that, in spite of the occasional bread riot, it felt like things were never gonna change, as much as everyone hoped they would. I'm so happy for the wonderful people of Egypt and all that their bravery has accomplished. May the sun rise on a functional, representative government as (relatively) smoothly as it has set on Mubarak. Long live Egypt!

John Johnson

Holy guacamole! It's been nearly a month since I posted! Apologies for having been so remiss. I wasn't all that busy in any usual sense of the word, but I suppose I was trying to enjoy my time with Kaede as much as possible. In case you're still worried, my pink eye cleared up no problem. I wound up in UB for just a few days and then got flown back to Kaede. School and work get all but canceled this time of year. There's a ton of holidays, it's really cold outside, and everything just kinda falls apart. A week after I returned, the city's foreign language methodologist hosted a two-day seminar on a variety of subjects. Kaede, Zoloo, and I were given half of one of the days to inform the teachers about creative writing and its benefits in the foreign language classroom. Because of my conjunctivitis and the resulting trip to UB, we didn't have quite as much time to plan as we might have liked, but overall it went really well. Everyone seemed to feel it was a useful and important topic, though we're a bit skeptical that many of them will wind up implementing it in the classroom. Oh well, at the very least we're hoping to get some of them to motivate their students to participate in the International Writing Olympics, a competition started a few years ago by a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia wherein students from PC countries around the globe have one hour to respond to one of three creative writing prompts. Essays are judged on ideas, not grammar and spelling. Mongolians love competitions and prizes, so hopefully this will be a good way to get them interested in creative writing. I should note that this whole thing was Kaede's idea. Thank god I have such a motivated girlfriend.


Or should I say, fiancée! Certainly the biggest news of the last month is that Kaede and I are now engaged! It's pretty crazy, I know. A year ago, I didn't even know I was coming to Mongolia, and if you'd told me I'd be engaged by now, I probably would've hit you. Shows what I know. But yeah, Kaede and I have been talking about it for a while. I definitely feel like I would be very happy for the rest of my life with her, and she seems to feel the same way about me. So it had been something we sort of expected to happen at some point from pretty early on. Then, back in October, our good friend and fellow PCV Tim, who sensed our potential, alerted us to the PC policy that says that volunteers who marry each other during service can be moved to the same site. Being away from each other is so difficult, not to mention distracting, that we knew we'd be happier and more effective as volunteers if we were together. But, as sure as we were, we figured we ought to give it a bit more time before we put the wheels in motion. Fortunately, we knew Kaede was going to have this month-long break in January, and we figured that would be the closest thing to a test run we would get. Needless to say, it went really well, so when I was in UB, I picked up a ring.

Kaede of course guessed I would do just that, and as soon as I got back, she was all over me, helping me "unpack." I hadn't expected her to be so aggressive about it, and somehow clutching my backpack and refusing to let her see anything inside it kind of gave me away. Just my luck that I couldn't remember which pocket I'd put the ring in, so that the little golden box holding it flew right out as I was fumbling around trying to find it. I snatched it and hid it behind my back, locked a very excited Kaede in the bathroom, and hid it away until the proper time. The next week it seemed every other minute she was asking me when "Box Day" would come. The following Saturday marked six months since we'd gotten together, so she pretty quickly divined that that would be the day. And it was. The surprise was kind of ruined, but what can ya do? At least this makes a better story.

So we're going to get married this summer! Hence the title of this post: if I took Kaede's last name, that'd make me John Johnson. Amusing as that is, I'm pretty sure I won't. We talked to Ellen, the country director, about it, and she's pretty much on board. It sounds like it's more likely that Kaede will move to Choibalsan rather than the other way around. Fortunately we're fairly ambivalent as to who goes where. Tsetserleg is super beautiful, but Choibalsan seems to have better community-volunteer relations, and my school also works with me a lot better than Kaede's does. We'll see. Apparently quite soon too. We were worried we wouldn't know who was going where until as late as the summer, but Ellen says we'll probably know by the end of the month!


I spent the last two weeks in Ulaanbaatar and Arkhangai, Kaede's site. We had a week-long break for Tsagaan Sar, the biggest holiday of the year. Kaede and I headed to UB with Baagii to get his ears taken care of. The picture above is him sleeping under my hat on the long bus ride in. As you may or may not be aware, the poor little guy had pretty bad frostbite and ear mites which culminated in the tips of his ears falling off. Originally Kaede was going to take Jagaa back to her site, but when Baagii's ears got bad, we realized he needed to see a vet, so she wound up with him instead. Anyway, the vet looked at his ears and told us they needed to be trimmed down to the living flesh, but that they couldn't operate until he'd been dewormed, or the anesthesia could be deadly. So after a few days of hanging out in UB with our friend Sarah, which included lots of good food and a trip to the national opera (which is where we are in the pic below), we headed to Arkhangai for what we'd hoped was just a few days so that Kaede could meet with her counterparts and start planning the new semester. Unfortunately, they were all too busy preparing for Tsagaan Sar to see her. We wanted to go back to Bayandelger to spend the holiday with our host families, but the buses were all shut down, so we got stranded in Arkhangai. Tsagaan Sar is the celebration of the lunar new year. Families visit one another and eat and drink and give small presents. We wound up only visiting one family, but after hearing about the experiences of others, I'm not too sad about it. At each house, you're expected to eat at least three buuz and drink three shots of vodka. Many of my friends visited dozens of houses over the three days. They were drunk, overstuffed, and exhausted. Anyway, we still have one more year to do it "right."


So instead of all that, we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather (one day it was in the 40s!!!), went hiking, and played a lot of Monopoly with the aforementioned Tim, as well as Mark and Kara, Kaede's sitemates. It was quite nice actually. She lives in a really beautiful place, and it was nice to relax there for a while.

On Sunday we headed back to UB for Baagii's surgery. It went off the next day without a hitch. It turned out his ears were healing so well that they decided chopping them off was unnecessary. They did however take his balls and the tip of his tail, which had also gotten frostbitten as well as slightly broken. He was a bit off for the rest of the day, though it was mostly the anesthetic, which apparently was also a hallucinogen. He kept stumbling over himself and looking around at things that weren't there. It was a little bit cute, a little bit sad, and a lot of funny.

Now both Kaede and I are back at our respective sites, which is a real bummer. I miss her a lot, though I probably shouldn't complain. We were some lucky to get to spend a month and a half together during the school year. Hopefully I'll stay busy and get a lot of work done, and before long it'll be late March/early April, the next time we get to see each other. And then we'll only have another month or two apart before it's summer and we're together for good!

I hope you're all well, and that your Groundhog Day was unforgettable. I was not a little amused by the fact that the most important holiday of the year over here is at the same time as the most ridiculous one back in the states. Here's a pic of Kaede, Tim, Mark, Kara, and their Mongolian friend Ochka all decked out for the holiday.

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

...so I can, so I can
hide my nasty pink eye from the worrrrrld...

That's right, I got the stink eye. You can see it ruining a perfectly nice picture of Kaede, Jagaa, and me on a frigid walk down to the river above. In spite of the fact that Kaede had it and I've been spending a heck of a lot of time with her, it seems like it may have come from a different source, as she had bacterial conjunctivitis, and mine is viral. She claims it's because I keep rubbing Jagaa's poop in my eye, in spite of my repeated assertion that I do no such thing. Other than the unsightliness (no pun intended!), it hasn't been that hard on me. Actually, the worst part has been that, since it's pretty contagious, it's kept me from working. Oh, and now Peace Corps is a bit worried about it so they've flown me into UB to do some tests or something. I'm not entirely sure. That's a major bummer though, since that means Kaede is now alone in Choibalsan. Hopefully they won't keep me here long, but they've yet to give me an estimate. Ideally I'll be heading back to Choibalsan on the Friday flight, but I fear that's a bit unrealistic.

How bout a story! So at 6 or so tonight, I left the apartment and went to the road to grab a cab to the airport, which is a good ten miles or so out of town. The first cab I stopped told me he couldn't take me because his car was too small. I needed to find a big car, he said. Considering the one other time I'd been there it had been in a small car, I thought this odd, and I flagged down the next sedan to come by. This guy wasn't such a wussy, and off we went toward the airport. Or so I hoped. He was going a different way from how I'd gone the other time, but I figured, hey, it's the airport for the fourth biggest city in Mongolia... there's probably more than one road to get there. Well, that's probably true in the summer, but this is the winter, when, as is the case with many places in this country, there's only one road to get there, and then there's lots of would-be roads that are covered in snow. It soon became evident we were on one of the latter. At first the snow drifts were small enough for the Hyundai to overcome, but as we got farther from town, they got bigger, and it wasn't long before I was standing behind the car, pushing with all my might and regretting my earlier wussy accusation. To no avail, of course. After fifteen minutes or so, the driver got out, scratched his head, and walked over to take a leak. When he came back, he told me I could walk to the airport if I wanted. I saw a set of four lights on the horizon. Pretty humble, but so is the Choibalsan airport. I asked him if they were in fact the airport. They are, he said, and they're only a kilometer away. I mulled it over. Compared to recent nights, this one was relatively warm (about -10). Also, I was pretty warmly dressed, and I didn't have too much luggage (just a backpack and my laptop bag). Who knows how soon he'd dig himself out, or how accurately we'd be able to give a rescue vehicle directions to come pick me up, so I decided to go for it. I asked him how much I owed. At first he said 8000 tugriks, the standard rate for a ride to the airport. I was a little peeved at that, considering I definitely wasn't at the airport, but I didn't feel like arguing. As I was getting the money out, he changed his fee to 10000 tugriks, citing the fact that his car was now stuck in the snow and he was going to have to spend a lot of time and energy digging it out. This was a bit ridiculous, as it was his fault he took a bad road, but I did feel sorry for him, and I really didn't want to argue. I forked it over and headed for the lights.

His distance estimate was pretty accurate, but it was soon apparent that this was no airport. Rather it was a large remote dwelling with lots of angry barking dogs that added to my slowly building sense of impending doom. An image of freezing to death on the steppe flashed through my head, and I couldn't stop thinking of "To Build a Fire" by Jack London (at least that guy had his dog with him, as well as the means to make a fire, whether he screwed it up or not), but I snapped out of it and told myself I had to press on, and that, worse come to worst, I could always see the smoke stack of the coal plant at the edge of town, even if it was ten miles away, and I knew I could make it there if I had to. And part of me kinda hoped I'd die anyway, so that that lying driver could hear about it and feel like a jerk.

I left the "road" and started to hike overland along a set of power lines which I assumed led to the airport. It wasn't long before I crested a tiny hill and was rewarded with a view of the airport's squat little control tower in the distance. Distances are notoriously hard to eyeball in Mongolia in the daytime, to say nothing of the night. It looked far, but I figured no more than half an hour or so. I struck out, occasionally breaking through the snow to my crotch, occasionally catching my foot and falling on my face. I walked and walked and walked and the airport didn't seem to be getting much closer. I began to think I was losing my mind. Meanwhile, I was losing feeling in my feet. If you ever plan on doing some winter hiking in Mongolia, wear at least three layers of socks. On the bright side, the rest of me wasn't that cold at all. There was no wind, so my face was pretty much fine. I was wearing US military long underwear (thanks Uncle Phil!) under my jeans, which kept my legs plenty warm. And thanks to that goddamned coat, my torso was actually sweating profusely.

So I trudged on and on, and of course, eventually the airport did in fact get closer. After an hour and a half, I made it. And I didn't even miss the plane, as it had been delayed, though to be honest I was hoping I would so I could go back home to Kaede. I was quite a site when I finally arrived. First of all, there's not much of a parking lot, so people could tell I hadn't gotten out of a car. Here comes a crazy American, walking in from the darkness of the empty steppe covered in snow, his beard a big hairy icicle, one eye beet red. And when I took off my coat, my shirt was completely soaked from the sweat. It's a wonder they didn't have me arrested.

Anyway, I hope that's the most grueling physical challenge I have to face during my time in the Peace Corps. I'd been hoping for a story like that one, though it was a bit harrowing to live. But as unpleasant as it may have been, it's not a fraction as bad as knowing that Kaede is back in my apartment, the one place I've wanted her to be for months, the one place where I've dreamt awake and asleep of her magically appearing, and I'm six hundred kilometers away in stupid UB. But I guess that's just the way things go.

On a more uplifting note, we got a kitten! His name is Muurbaatar, which means "Cat-hero"! You can call him Baagii. Here's a picture of him after his first bath, and from the looks of it his last if he has anything to say about it!


He's a stray too. It's probably a little crazy to have two animals while serving in Peace Corps, but Kaede is gonna take one of 'em back with her to Tsetserleg when the time comes. Originally she was planning on bringing Jagaa, but she's beginning to take a real shine to Baagii, especially after he put the dog to shame by peeing in his litter (read: dirt) box the minute we brought it in the house. Jagaa still can't manage to do anything but eat the newspaper we lay down for her. Hopefully she'll learn a thing or two from the little kitten. As for now, she alternates between irrational fear of Baagii and terrifying excitement. Kaede, Baagii, and I are eagerly awaiting the middle ground. Here's a peek at what it might look like when it comes. And a shot of Baagii looking less emaciated and terrifying. As well as a nice view of my crotch.

Surprise Attack!!!!!!!!

So my Christmas wasn't so blue after all. As you may be aware, my lovely girlfriend Kaede rode for two days on dismal buses halfway across the country to surprise me on Christmas Eve! She had told me she wouldn't make it out here until mid-January, but she had been LYING! Anyway, it was just about the best Christmas present of all time, especially seeing as she's going to be here until mid-January, and then I'm probably gonna go with her to UB and then Tsetserleg, where she lives until the end of the month. That's a hell of a lot of time together for star-crossed lovers like us. We'll have to find someone to take care of Jagaa while we're there. I think Kaede's gonna miss her more than I will. They're becoming fast friends. Above is a pic of my two girls having a doze. Ain't they the cutest?

Christmas itself was a lot of fun, especially if you like eating. Which I DO. We had a big potluck at Bob's. There was turkey and steak rolls and mac & cheese and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry (actually lingonberry) sauce and pumpkin pie and apple pie and eggnog and Kenyan food from our friend Easterlina and a bunch of other stuff and even GUACAMOLE!!! That's right! Merrie had just returned from a brief check-up in Thailand, and she smuggled a bunch of avocados back with her. My god I'd forgotten how delicious they were. So we all stuffed ourselves and laid around under the Christmas lights and talked about a variety of things, and even though it felt nothing like Christmas, it was all very nice.

Over the last week Kaede and I have just been hanging out, doing crosswords and cooking good food and meeting and greeting the Choibalsan community. She's quite popular with all my counterparts and the like (just as I expected). Last night we went to my school's New Year's party (below is a picture of Zoloo dancing with Kaede, who is clearly pumped for me to be taking her picture... as usual). There was a lot of heavy drinking, which my counterparts told me was mandated by the administration... so much heavy drinking in fact that school was preemptively canceled for today. It was fun though. The highlight may have been when Kaede and I were forced to go up on stage and compete in a competition wherein each couple were given an animal and then made to impersonate two of said animal in love. And guess who won? Me and Kaede! Or should I say, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel! We squeaked at each other lovingly and then Kaede pretended she was hungry, so I ran up to a pole which was clearly a tree in our little pantomime and I found her a nut. She ate it and we won! I think perhaps only because we were the sole couple whose performance wasn't totally perverted. You should've seen the bears.

Happy New Year!


ADDENDUM: I didn't manage to get this post out last night before we left to celebrate the holiday, so I may as well add in what we did. It was fellow volunteer Susanne's birthday, so we all went out to dinner and then back to her place to cook onion rings and french fries and generally be as ridiculous as possible in the last few hours of 2010. It was a good time. At midnight fireworks went off all over the city. Here's a pic I took of one from Susanne's chilly balcony. Hope you all had/are having a great time too!

The Nine Nines

Welp, even though I've been freezing my butt off for two or three months now, winter only officially starts on Tuesday, when the sun is going to set at about 4:20, and with that begins the Nine Nines. The Nine Nines refer to the way Mongolians traditionally measure winter. They believe it lasts eighty-one days, which breaks down into nine sets of nines. This is how they classify them:

1. The First Nine- Milk vodka congeals.
2. The Second Nine- Russian vodka congeals.
3. The Third Nine- The tail of a three-year-old ox freezes.
4. The Fourth Nine- The horns of a four-year-old ox freeze.
5. The Fifth Nine- Boiled rice will thaw.
6. The Sixth Nine- Roads (where they exist) blacken, as in the snow melts off of them.
7. The Seventh Nine- Hilltops blacken.
8. The Eighth Nine- The ground becomes damp.
9. The Ninth Nine- Warm days set in.

The Ninth Nine will end sometime in Mid-March. Even back in Maine you'd be lucky if that were truly when "warm days set in," so I'm not holding out too much hope, especially since Zoloo's father claims that this is going to be the coldest winter in one thousand years. "The coldest winter since before Chinggis???" I asked incredulously. "I guess so," came the response. Ө янаа! At least it's been relatively warm the last few days.

So what else is new? Well last week there was a ginormous teacher's sports competition. Each department formed its own team and vied for the title of most athletic. Four different games were played: ping pong, tug-of-war, basketball, and volleyball. It was actually pretty fun (even though I hate basketball), but I was a bit shocked by how seriously a lot of the teachers took it, as well as the school administration. Classes ended hours early two days in a row for the sake of this event. That's cultural differences for ya. We actually fared pretty well. All my teammates expected me to be awesome at every sport for some reason, so I participated in all four. I completely let them down in ping pong, getting eliminated in the first round, but Muugii, another English teacher, took third in the women's section. I sucked pretty bad in volleyball too, and we didn't win a single match. I did much better than I expected in basketball, however, where we also took third (see our exhausted line-up above). Where I really shone, however, was tug-of-war. We came in second, only losing to a team with twice as many men as we had. It would be cool if American teachers did stuff like that, as long as they could keep from getting so intense about it. There was a lot of foul play in many of the events, especially basketball, away from which many of us walked with bloody scratches.

Not much else going on. Christmas is next week, so we're all figuring out what we're gonna cook for that. I'm planning on doing some more mac n cheese as well as a pumpkin pie, thanks to some key ingredients sent over by Mummuh LaMarche (velveeta and canned pumpkin... mmmboy). Jagaa is doing pretty well. She's slowly getting the idea that I don't like it when she poops or pees on the carpet. I also managed to find her a collar and a leash this weekend. She's been reacting to both of them surprisingly well. This raising a puppy stuff sure is a lot of work, though I've heard it gets easier. As for now, it just adds to the ever-growing list of reasons I wish Kaede and I lived together already. We'd make a pretty good team with the little rascal.

Hope you're all done your shopping! Stay warm!

John Russell owns a dog???

Yup! And her name is Jargalnokhoi! Look at her!

Or Jagaa for short. Or Puppy Khan as my family has dubbed her. I decided a real Mongolian name would be nice for a real Mongolian dog. Mongolians tend to get their (people) names by taking two words and sticking them together. My main counterpart is named Zolzaya, which means "Luckdestiny." My male counterpart's name is Altansukh, or "Goldenaxe." Pretty badass huh? My mother's name is Shinekhuu, or "New Son," even though she's a daughter. My teacher from this summer is named Bolortuya, or "Crystalbeam." So what does Jargalnokhoi mean, you ask? Why, Happinessdog, of course!

Here's the story. On Thursday night Bob was walking home from work when he saw the most adorable little puppy shivering and getting teased by children. The helpless lil gal wandered out into the road, right in the line of traffic. As a car came speeding down the icy street, Bob found himself running out and snatching her up. Once he'd saved her from getting run over, he was unable to set her back down, feeling the way she shivered in his arms. So he took her home, cleaned her up, gave her some food, and set about figuring out how to find her a nice home. At school the next day, he showed his fellow teachers and all his students pictures of how cute little Jagaa is. Everyone really wanted her... until they found out she was a girl. You see the concept of veterinarians, let alone that of spaying, doesn't really exist in this country, especially outside of UB. Therefore, a female dog basically equals puppies. Lots and lots of puppies. Puppy after unwanted puppy. Even with Bob offering to pay for the spaying, no one would bite (ha!). Until he ran into this sap that night at our weekly dinner. He showed me some pics (including the one above), and there was already something about Jagaa I really liked. Afterwards we went back to Bob's and I met the little critter. She's got a lot of energy, but you play with her for a while and she'll chill right out and fall asleep on your lap (see pic below... though that's actually Bob's lap). Something in me decided, what the hay, you're here for a year and a half, you've got a good support network at your site to take care of her whenever you have to leave town, and you can figure out what to do with her when you leave once you reach that point. So I brought her home that very night!

Having a puppy has been... interesting so far. You don't have to know me very well to know that I'm more of a cat person. So in addition to training Jagaa to be a good dog, I'm trying to train her to be a good cat. The biggest difficulty, you might guess, is getting the girl to pee outside. I guess it's more than I really ought to expect, what with the poor bladder control puppies have. I'm gonna designate a place in the house where I'll set down newspapers and hope that, if she can't hold it until I bring her out, she'll at least do it there. I tell ya, winter in Mongolia is a rough setting in which to raise a puppy. Standing outside for twenty minutes or half an hour waiting for Jagaa to pee would not rank among the most enjoyable parts of my day. Actually, what with my new wondercoat and other warm accessories, it's not so bad for me. I just start to feel bad for her. It's been between fifteen and thirty below all weekend, and after a minute or two in that, she starts to look pretty miserable. She hops around from foot to foot so she doesn't have to touch them any one of them to the frigid ground for too long, and she spends a lot of time searching for a way to sit down without having to put her ass on the snow (she has yet to find it). Anyway, we've been making some breakthroughs recently, and I figure once she starts to get the idea, getting out of the cold will help motivate her to do her business more quickly.

Needless to say I don't really know what I'm doing (thank god for the internet, as well as Kaede, who has a great deal of dog-rearing expertise), so if you have any experience training puppies, especially in a third world country, holla at me. Also, Choibalsan ain't exactly teeming with PetSmarts, so if you feel like sending a package, please include some fun puppy treats and toys and whatnot for Jagaa! She'd really appreciate it. One thing that might be especially useful is that bitter spray you can use to help teach her what not to chew on. Cuz right now, she chews on EVERYTHING.

Blue Christmas

So Kaede and I received some bad news yesterday. Apparently her school decided to postpone her winter break by three weeks, which means she won't get here until mid-January. We were really looking forward to being able to spend Christmas with each other (even though she was actually gonna get here two days after Christmas... close enough), but now I guess we'll just have to start planning for a Martin Luther King Day celebration. She will get here in time for January 22, which, hard as it is to believe, marks six months that we've been together, so that's something. I'm pretty bummed though. Coming back to site after the fun-and-fancy-free atmosphere that ruled in UB for two weeks has been quite difficult, and so this is just adding insult to injury. Oh well. My counterpart Zoloo just gave me some nice pics her brother-in-law took when Kaede and I went to have dinner with her family in UB recently, so at least I can look at those for the next six weeks. The one above is the two of us with Ochka, Zoloo's adorably sassy niece.

And of course, when it rains, it pours. Another sad thing happened this week. Franz, one of our VSO volunteers, left Choibalsan for good yesterday. He was supposed to be here for the whole two years I am, but a variety of forces conspired to keep that from happening. It's a real shame, since he was one of my favorite people here at site. It was very sudden too, so we barely had a chance to give him a proper goodbye. We did get to go out for dinner and sing some karaoke one last time. That was nice.

On a slightly more neutral note, yesterday I got to help the students from my school shovel the roads of the city. There aren't very many plow trucks round these here parts, so apparently that's a task that gets delegated to students and workers. It was kinda nice to do some manual labor, even if it was in the freezing cold, but I mostly enjoyed it just to see how much fun the students were having. I have a feeling if American students were asked to do a similar task, they wouldn't be quite so peachy about it. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but, seeing as its only December 9, I'm sure it'll happen again.

Here's a pic of me and Pookie (as we all affectionately call Franz) on his last night in town. We'll miss ya buddy!

Хагас жил

That's "khagas jil," which means "half a year," which is how long I've been in Mongolia now. Six months. Holy eff. And since it's looking like Peace Corps Mongolia is becoming a twenty-five month program, that means that in a week or two, I'll be a quarter of the way done my service. A QUARTER!!!!! Not to rehash the same wow-time-is-crazy-in-Peace-Corps litany that I've expressed a million times on this blog, but I simultaneously can't believe I've completed such a significant fraction of my service and yet haven't been here the whole two years already. Absolute insanity.

I flew back to Choibalsan from Ulaanbaatar today. How perfect that the first time I return to Chinggis Khaan International Airport is exactly six months to the day after flying into the country. The flight was short and pretty, and it made me wish I was a millionaire so I could fly myself back and forth whenever I wanted. It was unbelievably easier than that damned interminable bus ride. An hour and a half with an inflight meal versus fifteen hours with no leg room? Not even a fair fight. They should slow the plane down just to keep it from being so ridiculous.

So I was in (and around) UB for over two weeks, which makes it really weird to be back in Dornod, especially considering I spent pretty much that entire time with Kaede (see pic above... she's so happy she can't even keep her eyes open!). Oo yanaa, it's rough being here without her now. We had a really great time after having gone so long without each other. We watched Hitchcock films and cooked delicious meals and walked around town and ate soup at 24-hour soup restaurants (gotta love Mongolian fast food). Lots of good times were had in general, and my adoration for the girl was only reaffirmed, which makes it all the harder to be away once more. Fortunately, if everything goes as planned, it'll be barely three weeks til we see each other again. As a university teacher, she gets pretty much the entire month of January off, and she's looking to spend it here with me in sunny Dornod aimag! I'm the luckiest guy in Mongolia!

In addition to Kaede, I got to see all the rest of my friends from the summer. The majority of volunteers come in for PC's mammoth Thanksgiving celebration (which was delicious and coma-inducing), and those from my group who wouldn't have made it in normally came in anyway, for the week that followed was In-Service Training, or IST. The seminar itself was fairly helpful, if also quite demanding and mind-numbing at times, but it was definitely worth it for the chance to catch up with everyone who comprised my life this summer. Of course, our lives are radically different at this point, but everyone seems to be hanging in there. It's sad that we aren't guaranteed to see one another again until MST (Mid-Service Training) which will be in August. A lot of people head into UB for spring break, and most whom you don't run into then pop up at some point in the summer, but still, it's a bit sad.

The tough part is ahead; basically that's what this all means. For Mongolian volunteers, getting through the first winter is often the biggest hurdle of one's entire service. You're far, far away from the overwhelming majority of the people you love, you're still probably settling into work, cultural and linguistic difficulties continue to abound, and you're colder than you've ever been before in your life. It's only December 5, but the days are already dipping below zero with mustache-freezing regularity. Fortunately my new coat could protect me in even the most nuclear of winters, and my apartment is still plenty warm, so I'm not too worried about the weather stuff.

I probably ought to have more to say. I'm sure I do. But the thought of it is kinda exhausting to me right now. So I'm just gonna go ahead and sign off. Love you all, miss you all. Hope your holiday season is gearing up jollily. As you can see below, it is in Ulaanbaatar.