The past month has been very busy. I moved from my summer home in Orkhon to Baganuur, a district of the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. Baganuur has a population of around 25,000 and is located about 2 hours east of UB.

Ээж, Одко, Ме, Одмаа, Аав 

On August 19^th (my birthday), I was sworn in by the US Ambassador as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. Accompanying the ceremony were many performances of our attempts at Mongolian dance, music, and song from my fellow trainees and I. I sang a popular song as a friend played along on guitar. After the ceremony, we had a reception and many of our host families came. Immediately after that, we went back to the dorm where we were staying in Darkhan and packed our things to move to our respective sites.

My family saw me off with flowers, chocolates, a birthday cake, and plenty of hugs and kisses. I was even given watermelon by another family that I was close with in the community who hosted a friend of mine. So with all of my baggage, the water filter, wash bucket, medical kit, and sleeping bag that PC had given me, and my newly acquired watermelon, cake, and candies, I loaded the bus for UB. Since there are only two main roads in the entire country, most travel has to occur by first going to the capital, and then continuing on to your destination. So most of us spent a few nights in UB before moving to our permanent sites. Once loaded, our buses left the dorm. My language teacher and friend, Tumee, brought me a bottle of water and handed it to me through the window as we rolled away, along with letters from home and birthday cards from my brother, Mom, and Mammaw. We waved goodbye and headed off. No one chased our bus, flinging milk towards the sky as they had done when we left Orkhon to wish us safe and prosperous travels, but we were moving nonetheless.

Орхон Trainees

Tvmээ and I

I stayed one night in UB. I went to dinner with friends from my training site and with some volunteers who were in the city to show us around. We went to an Irish pub where I had a stew with a pastry on top and a salad. It was incredible. Later, we went to a party that one of the current PCV’s was having for all the newly sworn in volunteers at a dance club. Concluding possibly the busiest birthday I’ve ever had, I headed back to the dorm where I would stay for the night before moving to my new home the next morning.

Today marks 3 weeks since my arrival in Baganuur. I live in a 4^th floor one-room apartment very near to my school. I have running hot water and electricity. Since my city is large, I can find many products and produce that I haven’t seen all summer. Last week, I bought bananas. Today, I found a Dr. Pepper. Still, I am adjusting to things vastly new and foreign to me even though it’s my 4^th month in country.

Take for example, the weather. On September 6^th, we had our first snowfall. I awoke to snow still clinging to the mountains in the distance, though it had already melted from the ground. The temperature since then has often dipped below freezing, and today is the first day it has been out of the fifties. The sun is shining brightly and the sky is cloudless. I actually have my windows open as I sit at my kitchen table typing this post. Last night, however, I woke up at 3 freezing to put on another layer of clothes and turn on my space heater. Unpredictable. The heat in my apartment will be turned on next Thursday.

I spend my free time here reading and watching movies and tv shows. I just got internet in my apartment via a USB modem, and have already been able to Skype home. I work at a school complex, but I work primarily with teachers. After administering an assessment last week, I divided my 25 counterparts into 3 levels. I’ll teach intermediate English on Mondays and advanced English on Wednesdays. I hold office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help my teachers lesson plan effectively. On Fridays, I have a special class of 9^th graders. They are selected students who excel in English, and the class will focus on listening and speaking activities. I’ll also start a beginning class for the teachers I work with who know no English, and I’ll leave it open for other teachers in the school to join as well.

I’ve met great people here. I work with great, motivated teachers who treat me as a friend. I have two other sitemates who I get together with occasionally to make tacos, pasta, chili, or whatever else we are craving. I was even invited to vacation with the family of one of my teachers in the summer. She said that I need to go sightseeing, and that I should come with her family and be shown around.

I am getting used to my new life in Baganuur. Days pass easier now that I have made my schedule. I am a really lucky girl with a great life that, at the moment, just happens to be stationed in a foreign country. I’m excited for the adventure ahead.

(cows crossing the playground in front of my building in the rain)

Today (Sunday, July 17^th) I went to “the countryside” with my sitemate, Bonnie, and her family. I would phonetically type “the countryside,” except that I am not sure how, which kind of works the countryside is a mysterious place. Let me elaborate. Seemingly one-by-one, PCT’s from my site have been being taken by their families to “the countryside.” When they get back to class, the stories from the countryside are strange and always surprising. Basically, we have learned from the retelling of these storites that if you are told that you are going to the countryside (which can be difficult to understand in the first place since “the countryside” is only one sound different than our closest pseudo-city, Khutul, where some other trainees are) expect that there might be a possibility of any of the following: you might spend the day weeding potatoes in the hot sun, your family or you might be about to butcher an unexpecting animal for lunch, you might be offered candy while going to the bathroom in a field, and best of all, you could possibly be staying the night. Bonnie and I had a less tumultuous experience.

We splashed around in a creek for a while, laid in the sun, rode a horse, ate some soup, had some vodka and “Mongolian vodka” which is made from yogurt, laid around in the sun some more, and then finally headed home. Among my favorite moments of the day was when we asked what we were going to eat, and Bonnie’s mom replied, “Countryside food.” After a great day of relaxation, we got in the car to head home. In the back seat: a live goat.

The trip to Khiid

The cold weather stayed through the weekend. Friday, though the day of our first Peace Corps evaluation and Language Proficiency Interview, was warmed by the multitude of mail I received at school. I got a letter from my brother and two packages from my mom, one which contained letters from a friend. I was overwhelmed with the amount of American goods I had in my reach. Then, on Saturday, we went to Amarbayasgalant Monastery with our families and language teachers. We left in the cold at around 5:30 in the morning and arrived a few hours later after driving through the countryside and mountains on dirt roads and through small creeks.

When we arrived, the men, including the American gents, went into the forest to find wood for a fire. When they returned, several were missing shoes that they had sacrificed to rivers that they had to cross, but they came back with trees on their backs. Once a fire was started, a metal bowl of tea was brewed. A breakfast of cucumbers, tomatoes, ham, and bread was prepared by the mothers and we feasted. Around this time, or 9:30, the first of the vodka shots were poured and toasts were given. I remember the phrase, “Maybe you are cold,” being uttered in justification. 3 rounds later, we visited the Monastery and conjoining school while several fathers stayed and prepared for lunch.

When we returned, we played games in the rain and tried to keep warm by the fire. The men were busy tending to lunch. A khorkhuk was being prepared. A goat had been killed and was put into a metal can of sorts with hot stones from the fire, possibly a bottle of vodka or beer, carrots, potatoes, onions, and salt, and then a lid was attached and the stew pressure-cooked for nearly an hour. After we had finished wrestling, playing a duck-duck-goose type game, and playing limbo, we were called to lunch. We were given the hot stoned from the mixture to pass between our hands to warm us up. Metal plates were filled with heaping portions of meat and root vegetables. I took my plate to a tired tree limb that was resting on the ground and began to feast on possibly the best meal I have ever had. My friends agreed that this peculiar delicacy could not be described in words.

As we finished eating, our language teacher, Tumee, brought us a beer, explaining that after eating this meal, we shouldn’t drink cold liquid or water because we would get very, very sick. Beer, however, was perfectly fine. So it goes.

We continued to enjoy our day in the beautiful countryside as the rain fell. We sang songs with our families and danced between cars playing music from their windows. I attempted the Mongolian Waltz with my Mongol dad. Soon after the dancing, we headed back to Orkhon. It wasn’t much later than 3 PM, but we were all exhausted. We stopped at a natural spring and drank water that was said to be holy because it was so pure. We also ate tiny strawberries we picked off the nearby mountain. Full, blessed, and happy, I fell asleep on the ride home.

Naadam

On July 6^th and 7^th, my soum celebrated Naadam, the national holiday recognizing Mongolia’s indepence from China that was gained in 1921. The holiday revolves around a sports festival honoring the three manly sports: wrestling, horse racing, and archery. We celebrated by going out to our town’s “stadium” (a ring of cinderblocks, more or less, in the open countryside). During the Naadam opening ceremony, there was a lot of singing and dancing. In fact, my host brother sang the “Orkhon song” and danced with some of his friends.

Then the wrestling commenced. Soon after, herds of children jockeys on horses came stampeding towards the area, and we all had to run to watch and cheer their arrival. This festival is supposed to take place during the hottest time of the year. However, our Naadam was unusually cold. Cold as in, I was wearing leggings, pants, two pairs of socks, a shirt, and two jackets one day—inside. I do not know where the cold came from, but it came fast. A friend’s mom told me that a cold summer meant a less harsh winter, so let’s hope that’s true. Despite the weather, the festivities were fun. I would liken the holiday to a rodeo—lot’s of people wandering around a campground of sorts, animals abounding, plenty of drinking, and even more fried food. The unofficially official Naadam food is hoshuur, a mixture of some variety of meat and onions fried in a portable dough pouch. It’s like a meat hot-pocket. But fried. And best with ketchup (which in Mongolia is spicy, thank God) or soy sauce. There is no clean way to eat hoshuur, and asking to eat only one or explaining that you are full is pointless because I think it is some (again unofficial) tradition that whenever hoshuur are made, they are made in large, large quantities. All in all, Naadam was fun. We even had a dance at the Culture Center one night, and who doesn’t love a dance? The other wonderful thing about Naadam is that since it is a national holiday, we got three days off from school. Even better: our three days were capital’s Naadam days, so we had our celebration Wednesday and Thursday, and then were off from school Monday-Wednesday the following week. I’ve enjoyed my holiday and have spent it reading a lot (I’m reading Life of Pi, the second Harry Potter, and Just Kids), and I’ve also been watching a lot of movies and Arrested Development thanks to my fellow sitemates allowing me to rip them from their external harddrives.

One month down...

            A month has passed since I left the States for Mongolia, and so much has happened. Since moving to Orkhon, I’ve had an interesting mix of relaxed Mongolian life and intense work schedules. Everyday, I go to the school for four hours of Mongolian language classes. Afterwards, I walk back to my house (about 20 minutes away) and eat whatever lunch my younger sister has prepared. After lunch, I return to school for afternoon technical sessions directed by Peace Corps Volunteers and training staff. These sessions range in topic from cultural adjustment and acclimation, to job-specific TEFL training. We also have culture classes held in Mongolian on Monday afternoons. Our language teachers direct these and we study a variety of topics including Mongolian history, customs and traditions, holidays, music and art, and, of course, how to make toasts during celebrations.

            Though my days are busy, I still somehow find time to read and hang out with new friends. My fellow sitemates and I have become fond of climbing a mountain in our town where an oboo rests at the top. Our entire town can be seen from the top, and it is a relaxing place to be. We also spend a lot of time at the park playing volleyball, basketball, and Frisbee with locals. We have found favorite spots around town to meet up and have lovingly nicknamed each. Among my favorites are the ger-zebo and the Soviet wall. Besides playing sports and “American Hang Out,” I play a variety of Mongolian games. The most popular are khuzur, a card game which seems to be a variant of hearts, and shagai, a marbles-type game played with sheep ankle bones.

            My soum is currently preparing for Naadam, a national sports festival with contests in wrestling, horse racing, and archery. Though the official holiday isn’t until next week, my soum is celebrating early, small-town style. My brother will be singing and dancing in the festivities. Meanwhile, my fellow Americans and I are trying to decide how we will spend the 4^th of July (tomorrow). We have school all day and, ironically, a culture session about Mongolian holidays in the afternoon, but we all agree that we want to have a celebration. Today while we are in Darkhan for our vaccinations, we all have the task of finding “something American” to bring to the party. Still no word yet on the firework situation.

            Before I left, many of my friends and family members were curious about what my diet would consist of while I’m abroad. Last week, I documented with a fool-proof tally system each food type that I ate. Over the whole week, the variety of my food ingredients did not stray from the following (listed by frequency): meat, noodles, onion, potato, bread, cabbage, red pepper, rice, egg, “fried something,” kash (cream-of-wheat style sweet porridge), pickles, and carrots. Every meal I ate consisted of some re-working of those ingredients. To drink, I was served coffee most frequently, followed by milk tea. I enjoy the food here, but nearly all of the Americans at my site and I fantasize pretty frequently about more variety. I’ve even started to dream of awful fast food from America, which I rarely ate but would gladly revisit. Sometimes I just get plain rice, which is one of my favorite dishes, and I add butter and salt and pepper and pretend that it is something from home. Another note about Mongolian cuisine: it is usually scalding hot. On my hot walks home from school, I usually can be heard wishing for anything but soup, because that is the hottest dish. Also, all liquids served with meals (coffee, milk tea, milk) are served hot. My family laughs at my inability to drink them as fast as they do, but it really is impossible.

            I really enjoy my time with my family. I have learned enough language to converse casually (usually about the same thing, but I’m having conversation nonetheless). We even make jokes together that I (usually) understand. I’ve sent some mail back home to my family, though. Sending mail is tricky here because my town doesn’t have a post office that is currently operating, so I have to hand off letters to a volunteer who is going to the city and pay that person to cover my postage. Receiving mail is slightly easier, but I still have to rely on the current volunteers/trainers to bring whatever mail I receive from the capital of UB to my site when they come for our afternoon sessions. I haven’t gotten any letters yet, though I’m sure some have been sent. It is a long process, but well worth it. Mail days are so exciting here. We even send intersite mail from soum to soum to fellow trainees. Since I have no internet and very limited phone access, mail is really special (enter shameless plug for you all to send me mail).

            I will not be back in Darkhan until mid-June, but now that I’ve realized that I can use my external hard drive as a USB, hopefully I can post more the next time I am able. Until then.

Orientation in Darkhan

For the past several days, I have been living in Darkhan at a dormitory with my fellow trainees for a quick orientation. Before arriving in Darkhan (by way of a turbulent 4-hour bus ride), we stayed one night in a ger camp in Ulaanbaatar. Many of the volunteers agreed that our introduction to Mongolia has been "cushy." Our meals have been good and our days easy. We've had running water. I'm at an internet cafe (think less Starbucks, more basement where Mongolian teens play violent video games.)
Here in Darkhan, we've spent our days in seminars ranging from our job expectations, to crash courses in Mongolian before we begin our four-hour daily classes next week at site. We even had an orientation to Mongolian culture today including norms, taboos, and the proper way to do a variety of activities including entering and exiting a home and accepting and refusing food. Once we're at site, we'll be living with host (hashaa) families who will help us learn other survival skills. In fact, our families have received a checklist of the skills that we need to be able to complete successfully by the end of the summer. Included on the list: how to chop wood, how to clean the stove, how to wash clothes by hand, and the ever-important how to bathe in a tumpin (small plastic tub). Not included on the list: how to use a latrine.
We concluded today's training by receiving information about our host families. I am very excited to go to site tomorrow and meet my hashaa family and the cows and dogs that they own. I'll be spending the summer with this family and they will invariably become my own. Not to mention, I will have no choice but to pick up Mongolian faster once out of my sweet dorm life and into complete submersion. Just think, in a few months I might be able to understand what these teenage boys are yelling in exclamation as they shoot guns and basketballs on the computers next to mine.
Though I am anticipating meeting my hashaa family, they will, of course, be no replacement for my own. I learned today that my brother and sister-in-law saw the heartbeat of their first baby, and I can only imagine what the phone call of that news would have been like. However, I hope that my family finds solace in knowing that I am being taken into this Mongolian family as one of their own without exception, and that the Peace Corps is making every effort to ensure my safety during my service.

In Transit

I arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday and had dinner with a few old friends at a Greek restaurant. The next day, I became a Peace Corps Trainee and completed a day's worth of staging activities with the people who will become my coworkers and support group for the next 27 months. We went over a lot of procedural information, but also had time to chat and get to know each other. Though I've just met this group of people, our shared circumstance has made it easy to become fast friends. We were reminded at one staging session in which we discussed our anxieties and aspirations about service that the beautiful thing about being in a room of fellow volunteers is that you do not need to explain your reasoning for moving halfway around the world to serve for 27 months. I could not agree with that fact more, and have found it refreshing to be around so many like-minded individuals. We have become surprisingly close in the past two days, and I hope my family and friends back home find comfort in knowing that I am serving alongside some wonderful people.

Last night we stayed at a Best Western in Seoul, South Korea. I went to dinner with some fellow volunteers and encountered my first experience with a language barrier. The evening was comical and relaxing. Our hotel was fun to explore as it was furnished in the style of the culture here. We had rice pillows in the closet, house shoes in the entry room before the sliding doors which separated our foyer from the sleeping area, and even floor pillows for meditation. My favorite misunderstanding was when my roommate and I were trying our best to make the "Makeup Room" light come on by pushing a button labeled as such, only to realize that the button lit up a sign outside our door instructing the hotel staff that we would like our room to be made up.

I am currently in line to check in to my flight to Ulaanbaatar. I am balancing my computer on the handle of the cart holding my luggage. I anticipate having internet access tonight, but am not sure about the certainty of it after that. The past several days in transit have been a whirlwind, but if they are any indicator for how my service will be, it will be filled with excitement, good friends, and new experiences.