Sain bainuu!

It is so weird to think that I’ve been in Mongolia (only) 13 days.  It has been a whirlwind two weeks, and it is really difficult to sum it all up.  So, yeah, why try?  End of blog.

Just kidding! 

So, it's been a little crazy here, to say the least.  We keep quite busy, so I'll keep everyone updated as I can during training.  Let me just try to catch you up from shortly after arriving.  This will likely be in two parts.  Oh! and pictures will be posted soon!

The first week in Mongolia was essentially summer camp.  No, really.  Summer camp aspect one:  Bunk beds.  I haven’t slept in a bunk bed since I can’t remember, much less the top bunk.  I was afraid that the plywood board that also doubled as a mattress (or at least it felt that way) would give in, and that would be the end of Leo, the poor, hapless fellow trainee sleeping below.  Summer camp aspect two:   Cool new people.  And lots of them.  I’ve had a great time meeting and hanging out with a bunch of new people.  Summer camp aspect three:  Cafeteria food…Mongolia style!  The food was not bad, though I had my fill of mutton after about two meals.  And one morning, we received an American-style salad – complete with iceberg lettuce, olives, bell peppers, and dressing – for breakfast.  And we’re pretty sure it also become lunch, as the same ingredients (minus the lettuce), including the olives, appeared in the soup.  Summer camp aspect four:  Cold showers.  Ice cold.  But after going to my host family’s house, where there is no plumbing, I was grateful for those showers.

We spent our days going through various sessions on technical, medical, and safety information.  We also started our Mongolian language classes.  My training group of eleven people started with two Mongolian teachers, Deegie and Orgio, whose hometown is our training site, so they continue as our language teachers there.  And let me not kid you.  Mongolian is tough!  It makes feel like I could become fluent in Spanish in a matter of days.  (In fact, almost all of us at some point or another wanted to default to Spanish.  I walked into a store and almost started a conversation with, “Hola!  Como esta usted?”)  The sentence structure alone is challenging.  I’m little-by-little getting the hang of it.

Our last night before splitting up and heading to training sites involved an outing to a local Western-style club that proved to be a lot of fun.  Our first taste of Mongolian nightlife was a win!

The next day, two Thursdays ago, we divided up into training sites, boarded meekers (bus-vans), and headed to different soums (villages) that were to be home for the next 10 weeks.  My training group, all TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) trainees, is very cool.  Here are there names (and I expect you to remember them!):  Marikaa, Caitlin, Stephanie, Andrew, Jordan, Sam, Daniel, Ashley, Ciarra, and John.  Our group gets along very well, though we miss others at other sites.

My host family is very cool.  My host mother is a grade-school teacher, and my host father is a vegetable farmer who works a plot of land somewhere away from our family hasha (yard).  The two of them are actually not home very often and are sometimes gone for several nights at a time.  I’m not entirely sure where they go.  I noticed my host mother dressing up like she was going to a club, and when I managed to ask in my broken Mongolian, they said they were going to the capital for something related to a graduation (I only got a vague idea).  I have a host brother (22) and sister-in-law (20); the two have a cute nine-month-old baby.  The two are students who are off for summer break and are home all day taking care of the house.  I also have a younger host brother who is 16 and almost never home.  A third brother lives and works in Ulaanbaatar, and I have not (yet) met him. 

Needless to say, I spent the vast majority of my host family time with the oldest brother and sister-in-law.  Also, the baby loves me.  Not kidding.  She follows me around when I’m home, and I’ve started singing English-language kids songs to her to help quiet her down when she cries. 

The language barrier is quite frustrating.  I managed to have short conversations with my host family, but they are labor-intensive and require the heavy use of dictionaries and phrasebooks, of which I’ve somehow started a collection.  Peace Corps alone gave us two phrasebooks and a dictionary, and my host family graced me with yet another Mongolian-English dictionary, on top of the Lonely Planet phrasebook I brought from home.  I also do a lot of miming, which despite my acting experience seems minimally effective.  I look forward to when I can have a more substantive conversation with my host family, as well as other members of the community.

I live with the family in a house.  Only a few trainees are living in gers (traditional Mongolian round felt tents) for training; most of us are in houses.  The house has entry room somewhat equivalent to a covered patio and a good-sized main room used as a kitchen, dining room, and living room, complete with satellite TV and a DVD player.  And then there are two bedrooms, of which I have one.  Peace Corps requires the host family to provide each trainee with his or her own room.  I feel bad because I’m 99.9% positive I inadvertently kicked someone – or several someones – out of their room.  Several family members sleep in one of the bedrooms, and a few sleep on the fold-out sofa bed in the living area, though as noted, my HF parents and the youngest brother are often not home.  The house itself is comfortable.  There is electricity but not plumbing of any kind, which I expected.  There is a well from which we draw water with a bucket and rope (which is actually a lot of fun, largely because it is novel).  As for the toilet – which I know you all want to know – yes, it is an outhouse.  It basically is a room with a platform with two slits through which you do your business.  It’s surprising how quickly you become accustomed to it, and the outhouse itself is kept reasonably clean.  My fellow trainees and I joke – and completely truthfully – that we often hold it to race home and use our own outhouse, much like you wait to use your own toilet at home back in the States.  There is a sink-like contraption in the entry room that you manually put water in, and it works quite well for washing hands and brushing teeth.  And as for bathing, Peace Corps issued us each a plastic tumpen, or large bucket, in which to bathe.  As you can imagine, bathing is not daily as a result, but I’ve gotten very used to washing down in various ways and taking a full bath when possible.


Okay, enough for now.  I'll write more later!