Life in the desert

August 26 Well, the Gobi has a lot of – you guessed it – sand. On the way here, it was hard to tell whether we were on a road or not because all of the landscape is brown and flat. On our six hour drive, there was one stop where we were able to get water. When we got to the city it looked kind of bare. We have one big school, a general store, a cafe, and a government building on the main street. There were a few people standing nearby, but it was hard to really see them because they were all wrapped up to protect themselves from the dust. There are actually more camels than people – it can get so crowded that you cannot even walk down the road. People use dung as fuel to cook their meals, and it can get very hot because of the weather outside. There is no river, but there is a well that we can fetch water and carry buckets to our house. My Ger is pretty sturdy. The winds can be very fierce, but there are large rocks hanging from its sides to weigh it down so the whole thing wont blow over. I have been warned that the Mongolian dogs can be very dangerous. At night I can hear them howling, but none of them have made it inside my Ger yet. By the way, I'm joking. I only wanted to get your imagination going. The gobi is not what I expected it to be, and its probably not what you expect it to be like either. It definitely will have some extreme weather, but people have been living here for a long time so I'm trying not to worry about it too much.

a couple days in the capital

August 17 - Today I officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer. There was a big ceremony, but I will not bore you with the details. One of the more important events surrounding the last few days of training was site announcements. We finally received some information about what our next two years of Mongolia will be like. For our first two months, we mostly got vague answers beginning with the statement: “It depends...” So long story short, I'm going to live in one of the cities of the Gobi desert, and I'll be living in a Ger. My situation is pretty good. I'm actually pleased that I'll be living in a desert and I also wanted to live in a Ger.

I also met my training manager. She is very nice, but does not know much English, so I was using my survival phrases to carry on a conversation. “Do you like potatoes? What is your favorite color? Is winter cold?” Actually, I asked more relevant questions than that, but my language skills are still very limited.

Before going out to site, we did some shopping in UB (the capital). I said goodbye again to some of my friends. I became pretty close to some of them, but work and distance might prevent me from communicating with them very much. At least I've got a phone now!

Oh yeah, and I took advantage of the movie theater in UB. I watched the new Batman movie and I also saw Brave. I missed out on Spiderman because the showtime was too late at night :( They were in English too, which was very helpful. There are quite a few movies on TV but they are usually dubbed in Russian, Korean, or Mongolian. Napoleon Dynamite was on the other day, but it was not nearly as good without the actual voices.

the great outdoors

August 10
There is some romance about living on the opposite side of the world. The air has a different aura, nature is more spectacular, and animals are captivating to observe. I've lived in Texas before, and I've seen plenty of farm animals. So why does it feel so new and strange here? I don't know. There is a lot of space here. I like going to the top of a hill, breathing in the brisk wind, and watching time creep by slowly.

One of the things on my checklist during my stay here was to spend the night in a Ger. My host family happened to put one up because someone else was going to be living there, and it was empty for a couple weeks.

I expressed my interest in this opportunity because I don't know whether I'll live in a Ger or not later on. I was amazed at how much one can hear through those walls. I felt like someone with the superpowers of invisibility and super-hearing. The next night, I got to experience a moonrise. It was really bright and happened to be aligned with the ceiling window of the Ger and my bed. The next evening was not so pleasant: rain + leaks = little sleep.

This was not on my checklist, but was equally amazing – one of the days before we left our training site, we got permission to sleep outdoors. We made our own fire, broke out some glow sticks, and got into our Peace Corps issued sleeping bags. The stars are very brilliant at night and there were tons of shooting stars too. The downside of sleeping outside was the mosquitoes. I didn't get bitten that many times, but that high pitched buzzing noise in my ear was irritating. Even though Mongolia is not an easy place to live and it is lacking some amenities (like plumbing and paved roads), there are other things that can be experienced here that defy reality, as if one were living in a dream.

Last photo is courtesy of one of my fellow-PCV's: LN

going to the monastery

July 31^st

Everything has been pretty easy to deal with, but it is often unpredictable. I think language has a lot to do with it, but I still think that things happen more spontaneously here. One of the biggest events here was taking a trip to the monastery. If you know me, that is a subject that I'm really interested in, so I was really curious about what it would be like.

Each person had about two family members along, and since there are 10 trainees here, that adds up to 30 plus people. We ended up leaving really early and then packed into 3 vehicles. I don't have photos, so I'll leave that up to your imagination. There was a stretch of paved road, but most of the trip was very bumpy and sometimes watery. One of the cars got a flat tire, but that seems to be a regular occurrence because they always have an extra tire handy. After a couple poddy breaks and a couple people puking, we were there in no time.

Most of us though that we were going straight to the monastery, but after circling around a couple times, we all stopped by a small creek. They started to get out some food for us and we started eating. I heard that we were all going to share a goat and they told us to gather some wood. They have a curious way of cooking large amounts. They put the food in a large container and then put really hot rocks inside to cook the food. While we were waiting for the second meal to cook, some of the American guys started to do Mongolian wrestling. Everyone was really excited to watch, and it was kind of funny because we don't know all the rules. Somehow I managed to win a match, but the next ones I didn't do so well and I got pretty tired. So then we had our second meal. Each of us got a huge bone with meat on it along with a small a little bit of vegetables. When I was biting some meat off the bone, I chipped a tooth : (

Anyways, everyone started to get restless again because not much was happening, and I saw someone going around with a squirt bottle spraying people. It was kind of humorous so someone got a bowl full of water and started splashing people. Eventually people got more bottles and containers filled with water until most everyone was soaked. Some people were hiding in the car, but they ended up getting dragged out and soaked. No one was spared, but everyone was a pretty good sport about it. Just when I though it was about over, somebody picked up one of the smaller kids and put them into the creek. It was pretty funny, but that added an entirely new dimension to the insanity. One of the Mongolian dads was strong enough to pick up just about anyone. I'm pretty sure all of the Americans got thrown into the creek by the time it was all over. I inadvertently packed an extra shirt and some shorts in my bag, and I was very happy to put them on later.

Okay, so we got back into our vehicles and went to this place that had holy water and everyone loaded up there water bottles to bring home. I tasted some and it was very fresh (no, I didn't get sick from it either). Near the monastery there were a couple of shrines on top of a large set of steps. Someone told me that one of them had exactly 108 steps. Apparently that is an important number. I tried to keep track, but I lost count. I walked with my family as we went around the shrine and spun the prayer wheels. It was all very strange and beautiful. Some people spread rice, lit incense, and gave money. When we got to the monastery we did not spend a whole lot of time inside. It was not huge, but very ornate. My camera couldn't really capture all of it, but there were many gods everywhere. One of the walls had 1,000 Buddhas. I happened to learn a phrase in Mongolian to ask someone if I can take their picture. I said the phrase to one of the monks, but they did not want their picture taken. When exiting, I guess you are supposed to go backwards. I didn't know that, but they stopped me in time before I went out the wrong way. There was this bizarre thing outside that you were supposed to go inside of and turn around three times in to get reborn, but I'll explain it more when I learn more about it. There was also a circle that you were supposed to stand in and pray with your eyes closed while going towards a wall in the distance, but I didn't do it right. There's a lot of cool things to learn about, and hope that I'll understand them better while I'm here.  

mongolian family

July 25^th

P.S. I ate Starburst this week, thank you American Mom.

I talk about myself way too much, so I am dedicating this posting to my Mongolian family. Most of the time, it has been just me, my parents, and one sister, but my brother's family was around for a couple of days too. They are all pretty laid back and easy to get along with.

My dad is one of the taxi drivers here. He got an award recently from the city for being a safe driver. We don't talk very much, but he's pretty nice to me. One of the days that my brother was here, the three of us went to the black market. That was one of my favorite days.

My mom reminds me a little bit of my grandma that passed away. She is a fantastic cook, often making meals from scratch and doing so with ease. She is kind and thoughtful, but not to the extent of spoiling me. She doesn't have a job but, but she does a lot of work around the house. 

My family has a pretty big garden. They have potatoes, carrots, green onions, radishes, and maybe more. My parents are sometimes working in the backyard late at night and also in the morning once in a while too.

My sister is a computer teacher at the school, and has the summer off. I have probably learned more about Mongolia from her than anybody else. I got a lot of really interesting cultural information from her. She knows English and Mongolian pretty well, so she has helped me with understanding some of the differences between the two languages. Recently, she has been teaching me less often because I have been “studying too much.” She figured out that I am pretty shy, so she has been trying to get me to be “more free.” I have met some of her friends and played cards a couple times. Though I couldn't understand what they were saying, it was really entertaining to watch them joke around, tease each other, and laugh. 

I'm only living here for 2 months, and will miss them when I leave. Hopefully I can come back to visit a few times.

grilled cheese and graveyard adventures

July 20

Over the past 2 months, I have had a couple chances to do cooking. I made soup once which was not too difficult, except that I was chopping the vegetables “incorrectly.” I also made a dish that is comparable to pasta with meat and vegetables. I made it mostly by myself and messed up one of the steps, but it was edible. I am going to try getting some practice making dough. I'm pretty sure they use the same recipe for noodles, dumplings, hushur, and maybe regular bread too. If I can figure out the formula, I will be very proud of myself.

I was trying to figure out a idea for making an American meal. At first, I was thinking tacos, chili, or possibly pizza. I realized that it would be a little to ambitious for me at the moment. I don't quite know which items are available or where to go to find them. Fresh tomatoes are around, but I did not come across them yet. Avocados don't exist as far as I know. I have not tasted any meat that resembles peperoni yet, and shredded cheese is rare. I decided upon making grilled cheese sandwiches because all of the ingredients were available. I have only seen people cook with oil, so I was curious if cooking with butter would be problematic. No worries though, it went well. I think they were pretty happy with it. I sliced some meat on the side (because every meal here has had meat so far) and also served pickles to go with it. In retrospect, I should have taken a picture – my bad :(

Today's adventures were not over yet. I really wanted to go to one of the mountains here because it is where people are buried. I checked with my sister to make sure that it was okay for us to go. She doesn't like going because she doesn't like being near ghosts, but we were allowed to go if we wanted. (Cultural note – traditionally, a person visits a family member that has passed away only once. Three years after someone dies, a family member will come and place milk or some type of food at the grave site and then they never come back to visit them again.) It was one of my favorite hikes so far - we got to see a spectacular sunset, and the gravestones were very interesting to look at. We were running out of time, so we didn't actually climb the mountain. Everything worked out fine, but it was kind of hard to see on the way back. Even though the sky was not black, it was a little disorienting to figure out how far away we actually were. We did have a road to follow, but the terrain was uneven and we had to walk pretty slowly. I took some of my friends home at the other side of town so it got pretty late by then. (I had my flashlight, so everything was completely fine.) I can understand why people think of the sky as a god. The moon was not out, but I could see clouds and stars at the same time. I wanted to take a picture, but it would be impossible to capture it into a good photo.