My Home-away-from-Home: Орхон
For the past two months, I’ve been living in a little
сyм(town) called Орхон (Orkhon). About 2,300 people live here and during the
summer, most of them are off in the countryside herding. We’re right next to the
longest river in Mongolia, the Орхон Гол (Orkhon River) which I have been told
multiple times by my host-mother that I am not allowed to swim in because it’s
deep, fast and they don’t want to have any American’s dying on their watch (I’m
paraphrasing, of course). We are surrounded by hills, most of which are crowned
by a small shrine (basically a large pile of rocks with a pole in the middle
that has dozens of silk scarves tied to it).
(Pictures will be
forthcoming as soon as the internet gods allow)
The weather here is mild, rarely reaching higher
than the mid-nineties and light showers are common, as are thunder and
lightning storms.
Oh, and paved roads are not a thing in Орхон and I
love it. It’s so fun to go riding around here in a Hyundai; let me tell you, I
am so glad I don’t have a problem with car sickness. One thing I love the most
about Орхон (and really Mongolia as a whole) is the sky. That vibrant blue has
been the norm almost every day I’ve been here. Yeah, it rains time-to-time and
there are clouds but the sky is just so BLUE and so BIG here. It probably
doesn’t make too much sense if you haven’t seen it but I’m starting to
understand why the call Mongolia the land of the blue sky.
Орхон itself is fairly well developed for a small
сyм. We have six (maybe 7?) little stores, two banks, a hospital, a primary and
secondary school, a park, a cultural center, a police station, a government
building and a few other public-buildings. I’ve heard rumor that we have a
take-out restaurant here but I’ve never seen it. Орхон does not, unfortunately,
have a post office which is why I’ve been so bad about writing and sending
letters during PST. I’m very hopeful that my permanent site will have a post
office in town or at least close to town. Who knows?
There is one shower house in Орхон where you can
pay 2,000 Төгрөг for twenty glorious moments of mostly-hot water.
Unfortunately, its hours are variable and even when they’re supposed to be
open, they tend to run out of water or a pipe breaks or what not so I’ve only
showered twice during my time here. One thing I’ve really missed is indoor
plumbing. Few things are more annoying than waking up in the middle of the
night having to go to the bathroom then remembering that you don’t have a
toilet. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “Hey Ash, if you don’t
have a toilet, where do you go to the bathroom?” Well, I’ll tell you. Here in
Орхон, and indeed in much of Mongolia, we use a Жарланг (jarlong): an outhouse
with a hole in the ground instead of a toilet seat. The Жарланг I will
eventually show you is a public Жарланг with three private stalls. It’s pretty
swanky. It’s also a very clean public Жарланг; I won’t go into detail about the
less swanky Жарлангs I’ve seen but they can get really unfortunate surprisingly
quickly. For those of you who were wondering, yes. Things get accidentally (or
intentionally) dropped down the Жарланг ALL the time. The first day we were
here, one of my site-mates dropped his solar-shower down his Жарланг and at
another side, a girl dropped her cell phone down her Жарланг. And it’s not just
Americans doing it, a few weeks ago, my host-father accidentally dropped an
entire roll of toilet paper down our Жарланг. All those things aside, having to
use a Жарланг really isn’t all that bad, especially once you’ve had a little
practice.
In my house in Орхон, I lived with my Ээж (mother)
Аав (father) and 3 Дуу (younger siblings).
(PIC)
There is a small building to the side is our
kitchen (where two of my Дуу usually sleep) and a main building is where the
rest of us sleep. There is a large bedroom/living room where my Ээж, Аав and 1
Дуу sleep, a dining-room area and a little bedroom where I sleep.
My bed is basically a plank of wood on legs with
blankets on top of it that takes up almost half of my room. Surprisingly, I
kind of love it. It took some getting used to but I actually sleep better on it
than I did on my bed in the States. Who’d have guessed? I am VERY glad that I
brought my own pillow though. The pillows here leave much to be desired.
Let’s see, what else can I tell you about Орхон?
I’ll have another post talking about my host family and how it was living with
them for two weeks so I guess I’ll give you a basic rundown of my training
schedule for the past two months.
Every morning, I’m up somewhere between 6:30 and
7:30, depending on what all I want to/need to get done before I eat breakfast
at around 8. Then, sometime around 8:15 to 8:45 I head to the secondary school.
From 9 to 1 we have Mongolian Language classes
where we try desperately not to sound like complete morons as we stumble
through about 1.5 semesters worth of material in two months. Then, we have a
lunch break from 1 to 2:30 during which we go home and make lunch (or eat the
lunch our host families have already prepared for us). After lunch it’s back to
school for technical sessions. During June, technical sessions included
cultural lessons and TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) sessions
where current PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) tried to impart knowledge on our
already exhausted brains. Some days were more successful than others. After our
mid-center training in the beginning of July (which I’ll get into shortly) our
technical sessions turned into cultural sessions on Mondays and practice
teaching for the rest of the week.
For practice teaching, we were divided into groups
of three and had to teach 24, 40-minute lessons to a group of Mongolian kids.
My group got the intermediate group and we usually had around 7 kids every day.
Which impressed the hell out of me! Going to 80-minutes of English lessons,
four days a week during your summer break doesn’t seem appealing. The kids must
have liked it thought because our students were asking about classes for next
summer so I’m calling it a success.
Then, most Saturdays and Sundays, we were free to
do what we pleased. Which for me, meant cleaning my room, doing laundry and
actually taking some time for myself to read and maybe write if I could bother
my brain to turn on again.
Now, PST is basically over. We are in Darkhan now
and will be going through a few more days of logistics and training then on to
UB for swearing-in then to our sites! My site is in Dundgobi Provence, Deren
Soum and not even Wikipedia knows anything about it. I do know that I’ll be
living in a ger so that’s exciting.
On one
hand, I’m glad to be done with PST, on the other hand, I’m a little sad it’s
over. PST has been hectic and full of confusion. Between barley knowing the
language, questionable communication between trainers and trainees and just the
inherent stress of being half way around the world, PST has been a challenge.
But it’s been a challenge I’ve really enjoyed. Getting to know my site-mates,
most of whom I would never have thought to hang-out with given the choice, has
been amazing. In the last two months, I’ve gotten to know these people better
than I know many people I spent 4 years with in college. There’s something
about being thrown into a situation like this that requires you to leave so
much of yourself open and while it can be terrifying, it can also be
exhilarating. I know that there’s a strong likelihood that we’ll be scattered
all over Mongolia by this time next month and yet I know that I can pick up my
phone any time, call them and know that they’ll be willing to listen to
whatever I have to say. And they know they can do the same.
Anyway, I meet my boss for the next two years in
less than 12 hours so I need to get some sleep but I wanted to post this for
you. Always remember that I love you and miss you and will try to update you as
much as I can.
