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.

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!