Where are you going? Where have you been?

So how bout a little summary of what my recent life has been like as well as a rundown of what's in store for me between now and my departure for Mongolia? Mmm, that sounds good. I'll have that.

Where to start? Well the picture above is of my family (plus Peter) and me just after my graduation from Oberlin. Following that bizarre ritual, I spent the summer living it up in a sweet apartment right on the Eastern Promenade in Portland, Maine. I was working at my favorite job, driving the launch boat for Handy Boat Services in Falmouth, only a few miles down the road. Besides working, drinking too much, and eating Buffalo wings (which, if you know me at all, you'll know that wings are perhaps my greatest passion), I did little of substance all summer long. I was living with my good pal, the aforementioned Peter Lord (once again, if you know me at all, you know Peter), and it was with him that I did the one real thing of note: we formed an all-male Indigo Girls cover band. We called ourselves the Indigo Guys. Somehow we went on to win the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival Battle of the Cover Bands, as well as five hundred bucks. Not too shabby for a couple guys making total asses of themselves. If you didn't make it to the performance, you can watch the videos on YouTube. Just search for "Indigo Guys." Actually I'll just embed the best one here. I mean, we're gonna go viral soon anyway.


At the end of the summer, Peter went back to Boston for his last year of college at Northeastern, and I moved in with my wonderful Aunt Claire and my equally wonderful Uncle Ron for a month to finish out the season at Handy Boat. It was a somewhat boring beginning to the fall, though I did get some good hiking in. Anyway, I could deal with a little ennui, since as soon as my job finished in early October, my sister Becky and I went on an epic road trip all around the country which lasted until Christmas. Although I've traveled quite a bit for a guy my age, I'd been very few places in America prior to that, so it was nice to make it out to the West Coast at last, and to see lots of national parks, as well as meet up with a ton of my more far-flung friends before leaving for the Peace Corps. Here is a map of the route we took.


Although the road trip basically ended when Becky and I made it to my mom's place in Pennsylvania for the holidays, I continued to live out of my car for the next month, traveling back up to Maine and meandering down via Boston and NYC, y'know, until the money ran out. Once that happened, I did what so many hip young college grads are doing nowadays and moved in with mom. Fortunately she got me a job right away working with her at Safe Harbour, a homeless shelter only a couple blocks away. So I've been in Carlisle, PA, for more than two months now, and while I wish I knew more people around here, it hasn't been so bad. I've appreciated the opportunity to chill out a little, especially after the frenzy of that road trip. And now that the Peace Corps has become a tangible, imminent reality, I'm enjoying it all the more. And while my job is really boring (I'm a file clerk... *shudder*), having some money has been nice. I've managed to make it to NYC a couple times, as well as down to DC and Baltimore, and even back to Ohio to see my old school. Wicked fun.

So what's next? Well I'll be in Carlisle until early May. I hope to squeeze a couple more trips in before I head out, one to Charlottesville, VA, to see some pals and check out Shenandoah National Park, one to Kentucky to check out Mammoth Cave and see that state for once (never really been before), and one more down to DC and Baltimore to see some buds before I head back up to Maine, which is where I'll be until I leave for the PC. I'm gonna help them start up the season at Handy Boat, but the biggest reason I'm returning is to soak in my home state as much as possible before I leave it for more than two years. I really love Maine, and being away even for a few months is obnoxiously tough for me, so twenty-seven should be... interesting.

Besides working and doing my favorite Mainey things, the only other event I've planned for May is the charity 9K which is described in the sidebar. I've been fortunate to get a lot of time to work out while living in PA, and I figured I could use that for good, so I've decided to attempt this 5.4 mile run. The farthest I've ever run before is about 3.5 miles, so I've got some training to do, but I think I ought to be able to pull it off. I'm trying to raise $2500 for the cause, so any donations would be greatly appreciated. For more information on the event and how to donate, check out the blurb on the right.

Anyway, that's my pre-Peace Corps life. More later!

San ban oh!

Apparently that's Mongolian for "hello" or "welcome" or "how are you?" or something like that. I'm sure I'll be able to tell you more definitively after a few months. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know who I am and why I'm writing it, but just in case you don't, my name is John, I'm from Maine, I'm a recent graduate of Oberlin College (B.A. in Comp Lit and CRWR), and I've just accepted an invitation from the Peace Corps to serve in Mongolia for twenty-seven long, cold months, from June 2010 until August 2012.

So why Peace Corps? I don't entirely know the answer to that. Of course, I hope to be able to use what skills I have to help others, and I'm eager to learn about other people, to see the ways in which we're similar as well as those in which we're different. I'd be lying if I said that much of my motivation isn't somewhat selfish: I love to travel, I love to experience that which is totally different from what I know, I crave culture shock. I seek what these things show me about myself, to see which aspects of my character are strengthened and which are abandoned after wrestling with who I am and what my place is in the world.

I've known I wanted to do the Peace Corps almost as long as I've known what the program is. Paul Theroux deserves a great part of the credit for that. Theroux is, in my (somewhat unpopular) opinion, one of America's absolute greatest living writers. He hails from Medford, Massachusetts, and was a volunteer with one of one the first ever Peace Corps delegations, serving in Malawi back in the 60s. Amusingly enough he did not complete his Peace Corps service in the normal manner. He was discharged, or "separated," as the PC euphemistically calls it, for supposed involvement in an attempted coup. As I recall, a professor friend of his fled Malawi (then called Nyasaland) when he could no longer take that government's increasing violations of liberty. Theroux agreed to drive his friend's car to Uganda, the professor's new home. This greatly irritated the government of Nyasaland, which viewed the professor as an enemy of the state, and they subsequently declared Theroux persona non grata. Hopefully my experience will go a little more smoothly than did that of my idol.

It's been a long wait. I applied at the end of January 2009. Normally it doesn't take this long, but there was some substantial bureaucratic SNAFU which slowed everything down. No need to get into that. I'd wanted to go to sub-Saharan Africa (just like Paul), but that's a pretty coveted region, and PC doesn't send as many people there as they used to. In terms of places outside of Africa that interest me, Mongolia is, believe it or not, at the top of the list. I have a tendency to develop fascinations with somewhat random regions of the world (they often share the attribute of frigid isolation). Newfoundland, Iceland, Svalbard, Mongolia. Additionally, a large part of my attraction to Mongolia can be attributed to the way in which, eight hundred years ago, this culture managed to conquer an area so enormous that it remains the largest contiguous empire in all of history, yet then somehow proceeded to all but vanish from the world stage. Craziness.

Things I'm less excited about include but are not limited to:

• the weather: temperatures regularly drop below freezing seven months out of the year
• the remoteness: I could be placed as much as a thirty-hour bus ride away from Ulan Bator (the capital and largest city... by a long shot), and even if I'm not so far away from that one real urban area, Mongolia is still one of the most isolated nations in the world
• the housing: I'm likely to live in a ger (more commonly known as a yurt), which is basically a souped-up tent, usually having mediocre heat and no running water... forget about internet!
• the language: I've heard it's incredibly difficult to learn, to say nothing of pronouncing it... needless to say, English speakers tend to be few and far between outside of the capital (and even inside of it), so I'm gonna be struggling for a while
• the ocean: I love it, aaaaand even the part of Mongolia that's closest is still four hundred miles away, and that's only to the Yellow Sea!!! WHATAMIGONNADOOOOO

Of course, I'm excited about dealing with each and every one of these challenges, and if I hadn't considered them before I applied, well, I suppose I wouldn't be a very good Peace Corps volunteer, now would I?

As you can see, already I'm not doing so well with the whole brevity thing. I'll try to keep these posts concise and readable (something which, if you recall the days of Pete and John in Cairo, can be a bit difficult for me), but even if internet isn't tough to come by, I'm sure I'll have lots to write about. Please don't be afraid to comment on them! Or to contact me in some other way. I tend to get very homesick, so any form of correspondence with all you lovely people is going to be much appreciated. I'll post info on how to send me snail mail closer to my departure.

So yeah, I hope you all enjoy the blog! Through it you'll be able to monitor my gradual transformation into this guy:

P.S. If you want more info about Theroux and his experience in the Corps, check out "The Killing of Hastings Banda." It's an article he wrote about the whole ordeal in 1971, eight years after his service. Not only is it interesting for its discussion of the deportation debacle, but it's also an excellent portrayal of the struggles a volunteer encounters while serving, albeit in a very different region from where I'm headed.