This has nothing to do with Peace Corps

Hey, I've basically given up on this whole Peace Corps blog thing. Sorry guys, it's just not my jam. Maybe I'll type up my journal sometime and you can read that. After some careful edits. ;) Anyway, I've had a bit of free time recently and I've found myself using it to think, a lot. One of the things that's been on my mind is my adoption. So, in honor of my 26th adoption day, I prepared the following. As always, your comments and questions are more than welcome.

The way I look at it, I've been remarkably fortunate since before I was even born.

1. I WAS born.

My biological mother was a teenager who found herself pregnant and she decided to carry me to term. She went through the cravings, the constant need to pee, the swollen ankles and back-aches. I don't know what she had to give up in those nine months. Did she continue to go to school? Did she have to drop out; put her education on hold? Were her friends and family supportive? What cruel comments and judgments did she have to endure? I just don't know. But I am eternally grateful that she went through it all and brought me into the world.

2. I was given a chance.

Many teen-moms decide to keep their kids; sometimes that's great, sometimes it's not. There are a lot of factors that go into something like that. My biological mother decided not to keep me. I choose to believe that she thought I would have a better chance, more opportunities, with another family.

I don't know her; I don't KNOW what her reasoning was. Maybe she didn't want a kid yet, maybe she knew that a teenager raising an infant has to make a lot of tough sacrifices and she wasn't into that. Maybe she knew that an infant requires constant care and she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to care for me as well as she should. Maybe she thought that she wouldn't be able to follow her dreams and provide for me. Whatever her reasons, she decided to put me up for adoption.

3. I had a great foster family.

My foster parents were amazing, they cared for their kids and they brought order to the chaotic situations of many children. I know a lot of kids that go into the system end up in pretty bad places. They turn into little more than pay-checks from the government and spend some of the most formative years of their lives being, at best, ignored. I was cared for, I was loved. I had foster siblings that were cared for and loved. It was a good place to be.

4. I was adopted by an amazing couple.

I could spend hours praising my parents; I could also spend hours complaining about them. I think that's how a daughter's supposed to feel. Maybe sometime I'll write all of that down but for now, what you need to know is that my parents handled my adoption amazingly. They never lied to me. Never pretended I wasn't adopted. I can't emphasize how important this is to me. My adoption is a celebration. Every year, on the 19th of February, I have a second birthday. It was the day I officially came into my parent's life. We spend time together as a family, go out to dinner and a movie, maybe look through old baby pictures and play cards. I don't know if my parents realize, even now, how much that shaped me. I'll discuss some of the challenges adoptees face in a bit but knowing from the start and having it be a positive thing has been so important.

4b. My extended family welcomed me with open arms.

My grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all of them. I am so much theirs that many of my younger cousins don't believe my older cousins and me when we talk about my adoption. They forget that I am adopted. It doesn't matter. I am theirs.

5. "I'm adoptable."

One of my favorite tongue-in-cheek phrases. Over the years, I've made amazing friends and I've been fortunate enough to be adopted into many of their families. I have a dozen sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers. People I love as family, regardless of blood. I know this isn't necessarily an uncommon occurrence, many people have friends that are as family to them. I can't even say that this is unique to adoptees. But I am grateful for it, regardless. Knowing that there are so many people out there who love me, worry about me, would drop things at a moments notice if I needed them, it helps fill that hole that I think all adoptees have.

Because, while I have been remarkably fortunate, I have also suffered. I think all adoptees suffer, in one way or another, because of our situations. I've tried, time and again, to put that suffering into words but I haven't been able to find the right ones. Ours is a situation that a non-adoptee simply can't understand. Not truly. There can be theoretical understanding but that feeling, that aching void at the center of who you are is something that you KNOW or you don't.

That void is where non-adoptees keep their template. Their foundations. It's filled with every little thing your family gave you before you were born. Things that you've discovered as you've aged. It's filled with moments like the time you realized that you have your grandmother's eyes or that your father does the same little nose-twitch when he laughs that you do. It's that moment in school when you had to do a genealogy chart and realized that you're distantly related to George Washington. It's watching your parents age and seeing a glimpse of your future. It's going to a doctor and being able to tell them if there's a history of heart problems in your family. It's celebrating Cinco de Mayo and remembering that your ancestor fought in the Battle of Puebla. It's every little thing that connects you to your family through the generations. It's knowing what's in your blood.

I don't have that. I have borrowed traditions. I am a tree without roots. I am a leaf desperately trying to connect to a branch that I have been severed from. I can see it, I know what it's supposed to be like, what it should look like. But I don't have it. I can't. It was taken from me before I had a chance to know it. Part of me wishes I could make you feel what I feel in those moments when the vast weight of the unknown threatens to crush me. A larger part of me is glad that you'll never have to feel it.

But even in this, I am fortunate. I don't think I would be as obsessed with knowledge as I am now, were it not for the knowledge that has been withheld from me. If I knew about myself what everyone else knows about themselves, would I search so hard for answers to every esoteric question under the sun? Would I obsessively seek to know everything I can, to experience this life to its fullest?

I have led a remarkably fortunate life. I am grateful for all that I have because I know what could have been. I began this life lucky. This is how I choose to view my adoption, my circumstances. That doesn't mean I'm blind to other possible interpretations. I was abandoned; dropped like an out of season pair of shoes. Thrown into a flawed system with little concern for my future. I was a mistake. I wasn't wanted. My own parents didn't have my back, why should I expect anyone else to? I don't count. I'm not REALLY family. I'm the extra, the addendum, there's an asterisk by my name. Caution: damaged goods. I know some adoptees feel that way. I know some people probably look at me that way. But that is not what I choose. I am unbound; I am not tied down by your expectations. I don't have a legacy to live up to or destroy. I am the sum of my decisions and my actions and nothing else. I don't have to answer for my predecessors because I don't have them. I am not bound by ancestral grudges, historical feuds. I am free and I am fortunate.          

Saturday

02:00

A frantic pounding on my door woke me from a light slumber. It can be difficult to sleep during a Mongolian spring. The wind, which contented itself with being frigid but relatively light all winter, has returned with what can only be described as a homicidal vengeance. My entire ger shifts with the force of the gusts, my door shudders, the stove pipe clangs against the roof and all the while I toss and turn on my wooden-plank bed and wonder why I ever thought the sound of a windstorm was pleasant. Anyway, the knocks on my door were soon accompanied by cries of “Ash-bagshaa!” (Ash-teacher) that had me scrambling out of my sleeping bag and clumsily pulling on a sweater as I headed toward the door. Outside, I found my seven-year-old khashaa sister, her little cousin and one of my fifth grade students all huddling in my ping (a small shed-like building right outside my door that helps with temperature control in the winter). Apparently, the khashaa guard dog was sleeping in front of the door to the main house and the kids couldn’t get past it because they’re afraid of him. So, I stepped into my shoes and led them the ten feet to the house and distracted the dog (who isn’t mean at all, but he can be a little overenthusiastic when it comes to pets) while they went inside. It wasn’t until I returned to my ger and climbed back into bed that I even thought to wonder why three kids were running around outside at 2 o’clock in the morning.

09:20

Today started, as the past few days have, with a windstorm strong enough to send the photographs and cards I have over my bed cascading down onto my head. Not the most pleasant awakening; though I was having a disturbing dream so it wasn’t an entirely unwelcome awakening. Reading Stephen King before bed is probably not the wisest decision. In true weekend spirit, I decided to roll over and doze for a bit and not subject myself to reality until I absolutely had to. Though the worst of winter is, hopefully, behind us, mornings can still be chilly and I wasn’t in a hurry to leave my warm nest of blankets. Of course, the weather had different plans for me. Less than twenty minutes later it started hailing and I had to get out of bed, go outside and close the canvas flap over my windows or have hail and snow/rain falling onto my stove for who knows how long. As it turns out, it would’ve only been for about an hour.

My morning was spent comfortably lazy; aside from the hail-issue. I had a cup of coffee (instant from America, slightly less disappointing than instant from Mongolia) and turned my left-over mashed potatoes from the night before into a sort-of potato pancake to eat with my yogurt and apple. A satisfactory Mongolian breakfast, if I do say so myself. I finished Salem’s Lot; which was, after a truly wretched and slow start, not too bad of a book. I’m still not convinced Stephen King is as scary as others claim but he’s not bad once he actually gets going.

In the afternoon, my khashaa family invited me over for lunch; a very proper Mongolian meal of fried meat, rice, potatoes and eggs. We watched a few Mongolian shows then my khashaa sisters came to my ger to watch an American movie. Let me tell you, trying to get those three to decide on a movie to watch was not easy. In the end, the oldest one and I watched the new(ish) Dracula; the one with Luke Evans. I was pleased to discover that I could explain the good majority of what was happening to her in Mongolian. Some parts I could even translate word-for-word. It was a triumphant moment.

(Can we just take a moment to appreciate this man? He's epic. A great actor with a wonderful voice and a smile that's contagious. Love him!)

Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet. Made a new blog that I’m dedicating to the small ramblings I come up with when I’m left alone/idle for too long. A VERY common occurrence here let me tell you. I’ve begun to carry around a small notebook that I can write my little philosophies in while I’m waiting for this, that, or the other to start. It was a nice Saturday. Calm (aside from the wind), not hideously cold, and I didn’t have to leave my khashaa. Tomorrow I’ll actually have to be productive. I have groceries to buy, laundry to do, hair to wash and the ever present need to sweep or otherwise clean my get.  But for now, I’ve been a good little PCV and updated my blog not once but twice and now I’ll probably go waste time on pintrest. Because it’s my day off, damnit, and I’ve earned it. 

I'm a baaaad blogger... Now illustrated!

Hey, look who accidentally took a break from blogging for the winter… So, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d horrible at blogging. Utterly terrible. In truth, I just don’t get it. I don’t quite get why someone wants to sit at their computer and read about my life. Even if that life is currently being lived in the middle of the Gobi desert. But, I do understand that I have friends and family that want to keep tabs on me so, I’m going to start treating this like a digital journal instead of a blog. I’m sure there are some of you out there who are just itching to yell at me about semantics but what can I say? I’m an odd creature, at times. So, a quick review of the winter before we head into the spring journal.

It was cold. Seriously. That’s what I’ve got. It was really, really cold. Like, too cold to snow. Too cold to go outside without three or four layers on. So cold that the refuse in the outhouse froze solid. My home went from Tattooine to Hoth in less than in month. Except, it snows on Hoth, so I bet Hoth is warmer than Mongolia in the winter. That being said, I survived. I kept my fire going as much as possible, I kept at least two layers on almost 24/7 and I drank enough hot tea and coffee to fill a small lake. School has continued with the ups-and-downs that every teacher faces. Some students love your subject; some students would rather be anywhere else. At least most students like me enough not to be completely unbearable. I’ve only had to get really terse with my classes a few times. My younger classes learned the lesson immediately and have been remarkably well behaved since. My older classes, not so much. But, they’re almost done with this school. They’ll be going to the larger town to finish out their scholastic careers and in about a month, they’ll be done with me and they know it.

As far as the holiday season, I’ve survived both Shine Jil (New Year) and Tsagaan Sar (White Month) without too much difficulty. Many PCVs dedicate entire posts to their experiences with these major Mongolian holidays but I’ve never been much for holidays and, quite frankly, I’m still so relieved that they’re over that I don’t want to dwell on them. Maybe later I’ll put something up about them. In all likelihood, it’s be next year when they roll around again. I received some truly marvelous care packages from friends and family. I really can’t over state how much those mean to me. The goodies are wonderful, of course, but it’s the reminder of home that makes them truly marvelous. The affirmation that there are still people back there who love me and who think about me is an astounding source of comfort and courage when the truth of my situation becomes a little too much.

And I’ll be honest, there are times when the realization of what I’ve gotten myself into is daunting. Feeling like the “odd-man-out” is not an entirely new feeling for me but I have never experienced it as acutely as I have since coming to live in my little soum (village). I’m the only foreigner for miles. In some cases, I’m the only foreigner the people living here have ever seen in person. Because of this, I literally can’t walk from my ger to the store (a five minute walk) without being stared at and called out to. Fortunately, 99% of those calls have been friendly but even so, the complete inability to be anonymous is exhausting. I can’t do anything without half my soum knowing about it 30 minutes later. If there’s an event and I’m not there, everyone knows and wants to know why. If there’s an event and I go, I’m immediately on everyone’s radar and they all want me to participate somehow. As someone who walks the line between extrovert and introvert very carefully, I can’t overstate how distressing this can be. And yet, despite all the attention I get there are moments when I’m just so lonely. No amount of “Сайн уу! Амьдрал ямар байна?” (Hi! How’s life?) can make up for a conversation between two people who understand each other explicitly; without the need to translate or explain cultural norms or idioms. I am liked here, people care about me and about my well-being but there are times when I might as well be from another planet.

Despite this, however, I am mostly happy. I like teaching, I like the people I work with and my family, I like my students. I have friends, we make jokes and laugh, they try to speak English, I try to speak Mongolian, and the woman who runs the store closest to me gives me little cookies or candies every time I come to buy yogurt. Life is, for the most part, good. 

The Magic of Mongolia

Monday, widely agreed to be the worst day of the week, regardless of what hemisphere you happen to live in. My workweek started with frigid temperatures and a bruise on my shoulder from sleeping on a clasp of my sleeping bag all night. Not an inspiring beginning. Knowing myself as well as I do, I always set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier than I actually want to get out of bed because it takes me about that long to convince myself that the entire effort is worth it. Today, it took me closer to 40 minutes to reach the conclusion that I had to get up and go about attending to my responsibilities. Even then, it was a masterful effort of will to stumble out of my sleeping bag and dress for work. Because it is only the beginning of the cold season, the only fuel I currently have for my fire is dried dung (no, it doesn’t smell). Dung burns quickly and quite warmly but unless I’m willing to get up multiple times in the night – spoiler: I’m not! – the morning finds my fire dead and my ger cold. A sad but inevitable truth until my winter fuel comes in. Today, due to my hesitation to get out of bed, I didn’t even bother trying to make a fire and instead warmed myself with a cup of instant coffee. (If you missed my description of that particular experience, kindly refer to the previous post.) While not a particularly fulfilling breakfast, it served its main purpose of restoring some warmth and I was able to feel my fingers enough to serve Motzaa her breakfast and find clothes to wear. My initial plans for attire were foiled by the ever-disappearing shirt that apparently takes nightly vacations to Narnia so instead of the black slacks and black turtleneck I’d planned on wearing, I settled on a black dress and sweater. No, I did not intentionally greet Monday with mourning attire but it seems, retrospectively, fitting. With clothes on, make-up applied (because Heavens help me if I should show my face at school without it!) and hair tamed I was ready to go when my khashaa sisters, Nanda and Nanda, (I’m not joking. Their names are Nandantsetseg –which means “precious flower” - and Nandanchimeg – which means “precious ornament” - and they both go by Nanda as a short name!) came to my ger to walk with me to school. This has been a morning ritual since the first day of school and I would find it much more adorable if they didn’t insist upon leaving the khashaa 20-25 minutes before we have to be at the school which is, if we walk very, very slowly, a 10 minute walk from our khashaa. Now, arriving at work 10-15 minutes early sounds like a good thing, I know, but sometimes that extra 10 minutes is the difference between a cup of coffee and a cookie or nothing. Today, however, the coffee at least was accomplished.

Now, I have to admit that I made a very rookie mistake when leaving my ger this morning. I was cold, even in my sweater and I was considering wearing a coat on top of it but when Nanda² came to get me, they were wearing light track-suit jackets over their uniforms so I assumed that, once I got out in the sun, it would be fine. What I did not take into account was the ability of the teenager to ignore the cold in favor of fashion (or, more often in my case when I was that age, stubbornness).By the time I reached the school, my hands were numb and even sticking them under my arms wasn’t enough warm them. So, I spent the morning with fumbling fingers and I had no one to blame but myself. I am currently wearing gloves and I am not ashamed to admit it!

Because I don’t have a 1^st hour class on Mondays, I spent the time in the teacher’s room which somehow manages to be ten degrees colder than the rest of the school but, today, was at least warmer than the outside. 2^nd hour is dedicated to my 6^th grade class that I teach with my main CP, for the purpose of this blog I will call her Y. Now, Y knows (or, at least, I’ve tried to explain) that I am not supposed to solo-teach her classes. I’m here to supplement her lessons, help her improve her English and give her new ideas for engaging students. She also knows that if we don’t lesson plan together, she’s supposed to teach that class herself while I observe. Today, she apparently decided that she didn’t know either of those things and, after greeting the students and taking attendance, promptly handed me the book to the appropriate page and said, “Okay, teach.”

Those of you who know me well can probably imagine the look that wanted to be on my face. A look that might be translated as “B* says what?” However, I am pleased to say that I have managed to school my expressions enough that I was able to give her a blank face, look down at the page and, with a deep breath, proceed to teach the students family vocabulary and how to ask about family members. The lesson went well, the students participated admirably and Y sat in the back doing paperwork. At the conclusion of the lesson, Y gave the students their homework while I took discrete, calming breaths behind her back.

This is not the first time I have experienced this issue with a CP and I know it will not be the last but it was particularly frustrating today because I’d thought we’d made some progress last week. Apparently, I was mistaken and will have to try to find another way to explain myself. Not an easy endeavor since she speaks about as much English as I do Mongolian. Behold the joys of small soum living.

My next lesson for the day was with my other CP who shall be known as T. T is, primarily, a Russian teacher but she is teaching half of the 7^th and 9^th grade classes this year. Because she is not a trained English teacher, her English is all but non-existent which (if you’re keeping score at home) means that there really isn’t anyone in my soum that I can carry on a conversation with in English that involves questions with more complicated answers than “yes/no”. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means that my Mongolian’s going to be damn good by the time I’m out of here and it means that there is a lot of room for me to help my CP’s improve. I really am looking forward to that but right now, while we’re trying to figure out the ground rules and what my role here is going to be, it’s more than a little frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating. My 3^rd hour is with half of the 9^th grade class. This is the same 9^th grade class that, as a whole, had a 69% rate of failure on their first test. Being the benevolent teachers that we are, we rewrote the test and – after reviewing the tricky parts with the classes – gave them the opportunity to score better. That retake was supposed to be today for T’s students. However, because the woman at the school who controls the copy machine was AWOL, T spent 35 minutes of the 40-minute period trying to find her and copy the test. I was left with squirrelly 9^th graders who know that I don’t have enough Mongolian to properly police them. What they didn’t realize, however, was that scary “you will obey me” rage transcends language. With my very basic understanding of classroom commands, I had them sitting as far from each other as possible and reading their textbooks for at least half of the class. This minor success was, however, not enough to cool my annoyance at the exceptionally poor planning of the day. And this was not the first time that I have been left alone, suddenly, to deal with this particular class. But wait, the amusement was not yet over!

Immediately following 9^th grade is T’s half of 7^th grade. Now, I will be discussing how my lesson planning with T goes in a moment (and how lesson planning with Y goes later) but let me first detail how lesson planning should go. Ideally, when a Peace Corps Volunteer and their CP lesson plan, it is a collaborative effort where the CP lets the PCV know what the students need to know according to the Ministry of Education and the PCV helps the CP come up with interesting and engaging ways to deliver that information to students. Now, let me tell you how lesson planning with T goes: Put simply, it doesn’t. Once, exactly once, I lesson planned when T was in the room and that was the extent of our lesson planning together. Unfortunately, I have not yet gotten a chance to corner her and try to discuss the issue with her. Tomorrow, however, she won’t be able to avoid me in the afternoon so hopefully we can come to an understanding.

Anyway, in a move that’s become far too familiar to me, T greets the students, writes the date on the board and then hands the book to me and says, “Okay, teach.” My patience isn’t infinite. First, Y springs a surprise lesson on me, then T abandons me to the hyper class from Hades and now T is trying to spring a surprise lesson on me too?! And both the surprise lessons are on entirely new units that I haven’t even looked over since no one’s given me any of the English books?! The image of me throwing the book to the floor, uttering an incredulous curse and storming from the classroom with a shout of “Good day, Madam! I said, good day!” flashed through my mind and brought me no small amount of satisfaction. However, I settled with giving her a blank face, looking down at the book with a deep breath and then proceeding to teach the class about conjugating verbs in the present continuous tense. The lesson went fairly well, I got the students out of their seats and acting out the verbs with varying degrees of enthusiasm which is always fun (for me at least).

Then, morning classes were over and I scurried home before I had a chance to so much as glare at Y or T. Lunch consisted of a fried egg scramble with sausage and cucumber and a glass of orange juice which actually tasted like real orange juice instead of the tang-esque stuff that I’d been finding. Joy abounds! After lunch and a brief pause to check facebook and email, I went back to school to meet with Y. Now, lesson planning with Y always starts promisingly. We’re both in the same room, she lets me know what lesson we should be teaching and then my dreams of a cooperative lesson planning session are crushed when she hands pieces of paper to me and says, “Okay, write.” Today was no different. Our last class of the day is the 5^th grade class so I started with them and planned a quick lesson to teach them basic family vocabulary. Then, we moved on to tomorrow’s classes and I planned them as well. After I wrote each one, I would tell her what I wrote and what materials she needed to prepare and then I’d move on to the next. This is how lesson planning has gone with Y since day one and, honestly, I’m not even upset about it. At least not today. Today, I was just tired. So, I planned and she took the plans and then we went to the 5^th grade class and I taught what I planned with a little translation from Y and by the time we were done I just wanted to go home, have some tea and maybe watch Lord of the Rings because Middle Earth is my happy place.

However, Y had other plans. About a week ago, she asked me what my hobbies were and, among other things, I mentioned that I like to paint. Well, Mongolians have a deep love of the arts and she insisted on seeing pictures of my work and I obliged. Like many artists, I both love and abhor showing my work; the desire for praise is often overshadowed by the fear of disdain but Y was a good audience and she even asked me to paint a portrait of her and her baby. I agreed and today, she decided, was the day for me to take photos so I could paint her over the week. So, I went to her mother’s ger where her baby stays during the day and was immediately greeted by Y’s niece and three little cousins as well as Y’s mother and incredibly (and adorably) fat little baby. They sat me down, gave me milk tea and cookies and I took a few reference photos of Y and baby. Then, they gave me a bag of apples and oranges (and an avocado!) that Y’s husband had brought from UB and then Y gave me a smaller bag of dried fruit and Y’s mother told me that she’d be giving me horse meat soon because one of her sons was bringing some by and that I should stop by for dinner again soon and by the time I left that warm, full ger I couldn’t quite remember why I’d been so tired and cranky when I entered it. 

That, my friends, is the magic of Mongolia. More than the endless skies or the rolling landscapes or vibrant history. More than the gers and the camels and the reindeer and the sub-zero temperatures. The people of Mongolia, their hospitality, their friendliness and their utter lack of malice can do more to lift the spirit than a strong cup of coffee on a winter morning. Sometimes, my CPs drive me up the wall, sometimes I just want my khashaa sisters to leave me the hell alone, sometimes I want my coworkers to realize that giggling every time I speak to them in Mongolian is not good for morale! But then, someone gives me a cup of milk tea or asks me if I need help with anything or if I’d like to come visit their family in the countryside and all those things that annoy me suddenly seem so much less important. I feel so fortunate to be in a community that legitimately wants me here and is excited to have my help and information. Yes, it’s going to be a difficult road and the language barrier is going to be one hell of a roadblock but even after the general frustration of the day I was able to return to my cold ger with a bag of fruit in hand and think, “Hey, it could be worse and I can make it even better.”

Each Day is Deserving of Eloquence

I’ve been struggling with that to write in this blog (obviously!) and I’ve recently realized that my main problem stems from the fact that I’ve been normalizing my experiences thus far. I haven’t written a lot partially because I’ve been busy, partially because I haven’t had internet (and by the time I got to the web all my previously prepared blogs seemed irrelevant) but mostly because I haven’t really allowed myself to consider my day-to-day extraordinary enough to write about. Take today for example; I got out of bed around 9, after a night of storms and a very loud cat made for poor sleeping conditions. Then I had some instant coffee and a cookie for breakfast, fed the very loud cat, got online for a bit, had lunch with my khashaa family and then returned home to wash my clothes. Nothing particularly interesting in that day, at least not when told that way, and that’s pretty much the way I’ve been telling everyday I’ve been here; with a few, momentary, exceptions. When I realized this, about half an hour ago, I very nearly smacked myself. I’m a writer, damn it! If I had the perseverance, I’d make a career out of turning the mundane into the fantastic and being a Peace Corps volunteer in any country is certainly not mundane! So, let me try again to describe a simple Sunday as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia.

The wind picked up sometime after sunset. I couldn’t tell you exactly when but with the wind came the chill and I was suddenly very glad that my Counter Part had forgotten to call me to go out with her. She’d said something about celebrating the oldest man and woman in the soum at the Culture Center. It might have been fun, Mongolian celebrations are usually worth going to but I really didn’t love the idea of eating more meat and drinking more fermented mares milk so I was more than content to stay home and re-watch the new Star Trek movies. I blame Benedict Cumberbatch for my failure to notice the growing wind. You can’t honestly expect a person to notice something as blasé as a windstorm with his voice echoing through your ger. By the time Into Darkness ended, I was ready for bed and – after refilling Motzaa’s water – snuggled down into my sleeping bag, covered that with my camel blanket and was ready to drift off into the arms of Morpheus. Unfortunately, in the sudden absence of Mr. Cumberbatch’s voice, it was impossible to ignore the tempest playing outside.

The metal stovepipe that funnels smoke from my ger banged against the window at random intervals with a metallic clang that inspired a small headache just behind my forehead. That, combined with the constant wooden clapping of one of the loose doors in the yard and the thwapping of my canvas walls, made for a percussion section that would be the pride of any demonic band. Above everything was the blustering whistle of the wind itself that blew with such a vengeance that I can only assume I’d insulted its mother sometime in the recent past.

With my patience quickly vanishing, I buried myself deeper into my sleeping bag and piled my Game of Thrones fleece around my head. (Forgetting that Westeros is not exactly a place to go for assistance and that winter is – indeed - coming!) As if on cue, my cat – clearly a Lannister, judging by her roar – started yowling and wandering around the foot of the bed. Why she decided to spend half the night crying some injustice to the stars, I don’t know but it took all of my patience not to kick her (literally) out of my bed and, perhaps, out of the ger!

I’m not sure when I finally fell asleep. Motzaa eventually calmed down after I spent a good half an hour petting her; sadly, I can’t say the same for the wind but I haven’t yet figured out how one would go about petting a windstorm so I guess that’s at least partially my fault. Once I fell asleep, I slept well enough with only a brief interruption at 3AM when Motzaa got her tie-down tangled around the bedpost. (Yes, I have a cat on a tie-down. It’s just until I winterize my ger and eliminate her escape routes. The neighborhood dogs would like nothing more than a Motzaa midnight snack!)

The morning came too early, as it usually does. The windows at the top of my ger guarantee that I see the sun sooner than I ever want to but, since it’s the weekend, I didn’t immediately get out of my warm cocoon. In fact, had it been a workday, I would have been in trouble. What had been a cool wind in the evening had turned downright cold overnight and when I woke, I could see my breath as a mist in front of me! It would have taken more willpower than I usually have in the morning to spring out of bed and prepare for school. Of course, in the months to come, my willpower will be put to quite a test but for today, I managed to happily avoid that trial for at least awhile longer.

When I began to hear people moving around the yard at 9, I finally dragged myself out of bed and pulled a jacket over my pajamas to make my morning trek to the outhouse. The wind immediately accosted me and had it not been for my very full bladder, I would have gone back inside and stayed there for the rest of the day. However, bodily functions won out and I scurried to the outhouse, did my business as quickly as possible and scurried back inside. Upon my return, Motzaa greeted me with her usual thunderous demand for breakfast and, after setting water to boil, I went about slicing pieces of mutton for her to eat. When I first arrived in Deren, the supervisor of my school graciously provided me with a sheep leg (which she then butchered in my ger for me) and because I don’t particularly like meat that seep leg has been Motzaa’s main source of sustenance. She hasn’t complained and neither have I.

After preparing Motzaa’s breakfast I turned to my own hunger and selected a particularly tasty looking cookie from the cookie bag before taking my one mug and filling it with that astounding blend of instant coffee, powdered milk and sugar that has become the closest I can get to a decent caffeine kick in the morning. If you haven’t experienced the joy of 3-in-1 instant coffee packets, I will try to explain.

First, you open the little foil pack and pour the contents into your cup. You find yourself staring down at a small pile of brown and white crystals that couldn’t possibly grow up to be a decent cup of coffee and feel a small twinge of despair. However, in the Gobi desert choices are limited so you take a deep breath and pour boiling water into the cup. You watch with astonishment at the clear liquid turns a gentle brown that looks almost identical to a cup of freshly ground coffee brewed to perfection then mixed with just a bit of cream. Your soul soars! No matter how many times this farce is played out you allow the tiniest glimmer of hope that today will be different. That today, it will actually taste just as it looks. With trembling hands, you raise the mug, inhaling the pleasant coffee-like aroma steaming toward you like an old friend. You blow gently, causing ripples to chase each other across the surface of the liquid before you lower your lips to the rim of the mug and take the smallest, most hesitant sip. And in that moment, you know why hope is double edged blade. It isn’t that the liquid is bad. It’s serviceable as a drink, sweet in a way that you would find pleasing if you could only stop thinking of it as coffee. But it claims to be coffee on the packet. It lies to you in vibrant letters every morning and like a fool, you believe it. You begin to wonder if this is what coffee is supposed to taste like, if your mind has somehow betrayed you and imagined some magical flavor that doesn’t actually exist on this earth. However, like the amputee who still feels their missing limb, you can feel the phantom endorphins shooting through your mind and you know that true coffee still exists, somewhere out there. It’s waiting for you and someday you will return to it. But not today. Not this morning. So you sip your liquid imitation and you eat your cookie and you endure. Because you are patient, you can wait.

Anyway, instant coffee in hand, I plugged my modem into my computer and – after my usual ritual of connecting and disconnecting a few times to get it to behave – checked facebook and my email and was in the process of checking pintrest when one of my little khashaa sisters, Naraa, knocked on my door and invited me over to the house for tea. At least, that was the gist of what she said. At five years old, she hasn’t quite grasped the concept that the clearly adult woman living in her yard doesn’t know Mongolian as well as she does. So, she rambles through words that I’ve hardly heard before, let alone recognize enough to understand, and looks at me with the token impatience of a child until I respond one way or the other. Fortunately, today I recognized the words for “my house” and “drink tea” so I nodded, put my jacket and shoes on and walked hand-in-hand with her the ten feet to her house.

As it turns out, “drink tea” actually meant have some milk-tea with rice and meat in it! Oh, and here’s a couple ribs (of what I suspect was goat meat) and eat them too. Now, I love Mongolians and I love that my khashaa family is so concerned with my wellbeing that they insist upon feeding me at every given opportunity but when a person says, “Come have tea!” I imagine a nice cup of black or green tea and maybe some biscuits. Since coming to Mongolia, I have added milk-tea to the list of acceptable teas to drink but I have not (and will not, damn it!) add milk-tea soup and goat ribs to the proper teatime menu! There are some things that a girl just has to put her foot down on. That being said, if the Peace Corps has taught me nothing else, it has certainly taught me to “roll with it” so I drank my milk-tea soup and ate my goat ribs and said, “thanks very much!”

After my impromptu lunch (because, again, SO not teatime!) I returned to my ger to wash my clothes. Now, clothes washing can be a bit of an adventure in Mongolia and I knew from experience that sometimes pants get a little squirrely when they’re being washed. So, I decided that I’d light a fire to keep me warm in the eventuality that my pants splashed all over me. Of course, I had to clean the ashes out of my stove first because I’d been neglecting to do so. The first part, actually shoveling the ashes into the bin so I could take them outside, was easy. The second part, transporting said ashes to their proper trashcan outside, was not so easy. You see, the wind was still in full swing and I stepped out of my ger and promptly got a face full of ash. The wind, obviously finding this hilarious, decided to blow harder and I continued to get a fine stream of ash blown on me as I walked through the yard to dispose of my burden. I think I still have ash in my hair. Teach me to be lazy and not empty my stove on a regular basis.

With that debacle out of the way, I quickly built my fire and set about to washing my clothes. As I’d anticipated, my black slacks got squirrelly and I ended up with one knee of my leggings wet but other than that, clothes washing was a success and they are, even now, hanging up to dry. However, I did use the last of my laundry soap today so I’ll need to remember to buy more. Normally a minor inconvenience but seeing as how difficult it’s been to find things in my soum recently, I am a bit nervous. The other day, I had to go to almost every store here to find bread and I couldn’t find eggs at all. The trials of small town life.

After washing my clothes, I sat down at my computer once more and realized that I’d been a terrible blogger and then had my epiphany as to why I’d been so terrible. I really am ashamed, I want to keep you updated as much as possible on my life. What is becoming commonplace to me – the joys of instant coffee and life in a ger – must still seem strange to many of you. Fortunately, I have a plan to write about every day of this coming week much as I wrote about today. Maybe that will help convince me to write more frequently. We’ll see. For now, I have nothing else to say. This evening, I have been invited to my khashaa family’s for dinner so I might add more about that later. Spoiler: meat will be involved.       

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.

(Oh, and as always, all opinions on this post and all posts reflect only my opinions. They do, in no way, reflect the opinions or policies of the Peace Corps, US Government or anyone at all but me.)

I am not afraid; I was born to do this

With just about two weeks until I leave Boise, I felt it appropriate to update this blog again, now that things are starting to get real. When I tell people that I’m going to Mongolia for the Peace Corps I get some standard questions; “What language do they speak in Mongolia?” “Will you be living in a tent?” “Did you get a choice where you wanted to go?” That last one usually came with a not so subtle look telling me that they’re questioning my sanity.

Concerning the language: They speak Mongolian in Mongolia. From what little I’ve learned so far, it’s an interesting language. Linguists have hesitantly placed it in the Altaic language family though it seems to stand on its own fairly well. As someone who has studied primarily Romantic and Semitic languages, this is new territory for me. Much to my disappointment, the traditional Mongolian script isn’t used as frequently anymore which is a shame as I think it’s much more lovely than Mongolian Cyrillic.

Concerning my living situation: The best answer I can give is: maybe. I don’t know where I’ll be yet. My first few months in Mongolia will be spent with a host family in pre-service training and I won’t even know exactly where that will take place until I get there. So, even with less than a month until my feet touch Mongolian soil, there’s still a lot up in the air. That being said, I do have some information about potential living situations. If I’m placed in a larger city, I could be in a cushy apartment with heat and running water and all that good stuff. Or, yes, I could be in a “tent”. Of course, when I say tent what I actually mean is a ger. (replace the “c” in care with a “g” sound and you’ve got a basic pronunciation). 

This is a ger:

As you can see, it’s a pretty nifty tent. Sadly, it doesn’t come with electric heat, running water or indoor plumbing of any kind. But hey, it has a coal stove.

Now, the big question to determine just how crazy I am: Yes, I had a choice. Sort of. I was able to express preferences and, when I spoke to a placement officer, we had a nice long discussion about what I’d be getting myself into by accepting an invitation to serve in Mongolia. However, a major part of deciding to volunteer for the Peace Corps is coming to terms with the idea that you will spend time being wildly uncomfortable, feeling utterly alone and curled up in a corner wondering what the hell were you thinking.

Which brings me to the actual point of this post. As my departure date comes closer, more and more people have been asking me how I feel. They want to know if I’m nervous or scared or questioning my decision to live on the other side of the world. The answer, believe it or not, is no. I’m nervous about getting everything ready to go in time. I’m scared of forgetting something I’ll need. But over all that, over the months of scrambling to prepare, I have lived with an odd certainty that I am finally doing what I need to do.

Those of you who know me well will know how significant it is when I say that, for the first time in my life, I am without doubt. I know that I am about to face difficulties that I can’t even imagine. I know that my perceptions will change; beliefs that I didn’t even know I had will be challenged and through everything I will be expected to continue on.  There will be days where convincing myself to get out of bed and keep trying will be the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. The odd thing is, even as I’m typing this, I realize that I’m looking forward to that. I have always seen myself as someone who would not give up, even with odds stacked against me. This is my chance to prove where it matters and I will.

So, yeah, maybe I’m crazy. But as far as I can tell, you have to be a little crazy to sign on for something like this. I’ll be leaving for San Francisco on the 24^th and then for Mongolia on the 30^th. I’m planning on putting up a small post on the 29^th after my staging event so look out for that. Afterwards, it’s hard to say when I’ll be able to post again so I’ll get this out of the way now. Anyone who wants to send me mail for the first few months I’m there can use this address:

Ashley Hislop, ‖ PCT

Post Office Box 1036 
Central Post Office
 Ulaanbaatar 15141
 Mongolia (via China)

Ashley Hislop,‖ PCT
АНУ-ын Энх тайвны корпус
Төв Шуудан
Шуудангийн хайрцаг 1036,
Улаанбаатар-15141 Монгол улс
Mongolia (via China))

It’s been suggested that you used both alphabets in order to make things easier for both postal services.

Before I go, I’d like to thank everyone for their interest and support. This will be a defining time in my life and I’m glad you’re with me.