Wait, did she say MONGOLIA!?

Well I made it through PST and am officially a PCV. Yeay! Here are some photos from my last few weeks of training:

A Buddhist shrine just outside Orkhon.

Buddha carved into the cliff; offerings on the table.

We had a picnic lunch in front of the shrine.

We hiked up the cliff to the OBOO (ohvoh), a kind of good-luck shrine.

One of our last get-togethers in Orkhon.

Playing pool outside.

The sunset on Solstice.

We taught our friend Hongra how to play beer pong on her birthday.

PCTs and host families in front of the school at our host family appreciation dinner (we cooked American dishes pot-luck style).

Jessica, Sara and I did a traditional Mongolian dance later that evening.

We said goodbye to Orkhon and went off to Darkhon for 5 days.

On our way out of town for the last (?) time.

Bye Orkhon! I had NO IDEA where I was moving to at this point. Terrifying!

The whole site placement announcements ordeal (yes ordeal) was exciting and frightening all at the same time. In Darkhon, there's a park that has a giant map of Mongolia in the ground. One by one, our names were called and we were led to stand on the spot where we were placed then given a packet of information about our city/soum and our HCA (Host Country Agency; where we're working). I remember being so nervous standing there, hands clasped, holding my breath, waiting for my name, watching my friends be scattered across this map, wondering if I'd be in a city or soum, a ger or apartment, the Gobi or the far West...I got so very lucky.

I've since moved to my new home, Choibalsan, in Dornod, the 4th largest city in Mongolia and the farthest Eastern province. I really love it here. I'm almost fully settled in and have been exporing my new home. School starts September 1, although I've already met most of my counterparts and some of the school's staff. I'm working on getting internet in my apartment; when that happens I'll be able to post more and respond to all of your emails/messages more in-depth. In the meantime, here's to Choibalsan!

САЙН БАЙНА УУ MИНИЙ АМEРИК ГЭЛ БYЛ БАС НАЙЗ!

I’ve been in-country for over 6 weeks now and what an experience it’s been. We spent our first night in a ГЭP (ger) camp just outside UB (Ulaanbaatar, the capital).

Inside the ger.

Ger camp.

The next morning.

We left ger camp for ДAPXAH (Darkhan), our PST base, where we spent 5 days before heading to our summer sites.

I’m currently in a CУM (soum, a small town) called OPXOH (Orkhon); it’s about 2,100 people and 45 minutes south of Darkhon. We have no internet here unfortunately, but the soum is absolutely gorgeous. My БАЙШИНA (bashen, house) is on a hill overlooking the Orkhon ГОЛ (golth, river) and the sun sets over rolling УУЛ (oolth, mountains).

The view from my backyard.

My home for PST.

My house and hashaa, from the hill to the north.

On this hill there's an OBOO (ovoo), a shrine for good luck.

I decided there needed to be an Inuksuk up there too.

I think I’ve taken a hundred pictures of the view. My host family consists of MИНИЙ ЭЭЖ, ЭMЭГTЭЙ ДYY БАС AAB (minnie edge, emegktay doo, bas aav, my mom, younger sister [15 years old] and dad), although AAB only recently came home.

Me and my host sister on night one.

My host dad’s family lives out in the XѲДѲѲ (hodoo, countryside) so I don’t see them as much as my host mother’s family. My host mother’s younger sister has a son, AЗУKA (Azuka), who’s 4 and reminds me so much of my nephew Makade. I play a lot of the same games with him that I did with Makade, and his squeals of laughter always pull at my heart a bit.

Azuka and myself at Naadam (see below).

As you can see, I’m learning ЖАAХАН МОНГОЛ ХЭЛ (jarhan Mongol helth, a little Mongolian language). We have 4 hours of language class M-F so it’s pretty intense. On Monday afternoons we have a few hours of cross-culture training, and on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday we have our TEFL Tech sessions where we learn about the Mongolian school system and how to teach English as a second language. We have Wednesday afternoons and weekends off; typically one of my site-mates (there are 12 PCTs here total) will have everyone over for dinner, cards and drinks. Weekends are also chore time: hand washing laundry and/or oneself in a TYMПЭH (tumpen), doing homework, slaughtering a goat/sheep/horse/cow/pig (we’ve taken to calling the method “unplugging.” If you’re squeamish, skip over this part: it’s when you cut a slit in the abdomen of the animal, reach your hand into the guts up to the aorta and literally unplug the blood supply. Yep. It’s a surprisingly clean way to kill.), or going on fieldtrips to the countryside. I’ll get to our most recent (and awesome) fieldtrip later. We have really great LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) here. CAPAA (Sara) and TYMЭЭ (Tumay) are not only teaching us the language, but they help organize get-togethers, dances, karaoke nights, meeting people in the community, volleyball, soccer and basketball tournaments, and just general good times. We really like them. MИНИЙ АМEРИК НАЙЗ (minnie Amerik netz, my American friends) here in Orkhon include Elliot, Sara, Justin, Nick, Bonnie, Jessica, Grant, Chuck, Meaghan, Tim and Chris. We’ve been doing some micro-teaching to the local kids as well as working on a community development project for Orkhon. It’s a lot of work, but it’s good practice. We recently celebrated HAAДAM (Naadam) in Orkhon.

Some of us at Naadam

There’s really no good way to translate exactly what Naadam is except to say it’s all the athleticism of the Olympics, the athletic support of Super Bowl Sunday, the nationalism of Independence Day, and the drinking/eating of Mardi Gras. Naadam is the festival of the Three Manly Sports (wrestling, archery and horse racing) so while watching these so-called manly sports you wear traditional dress and eat and drink ‘til you can’t consume a single thing more. My host ЭMЭЭ (emay, grandmother) made me a ДЭЭЛ (del) to wear which I dutifully did. I really love it. The best part though was riding my host cousin’s horse. My host sister, ЧУKA (Chuka), led me around for a solid 5 minutes on it, so it was really more like a pony ride, but it was still pretty incredible to be riding a Mongolian horse.

They’re much shorter and stockier than what (one would think of as) horses in America are. The food of choice for Naadam is XУУШУP (husher) which are kind of like what pasties are in the States: fried dough filled with meat and onion (or in my case, a mashed carrot-potato-green onion mixture). And the drink of choice is AЙPAГ (airag), which is fermented mare’s milk that I did try but just couldn’t drink. Which leads me into the food: there’s some ridiculously good food here, and some not so great. When an animal is unplugged, they eat everything. Everything. One night I came home to my host sister boiling horse liver, lung, heart and intestines. I had БУДAA (bodah, rice) that night. Ha! But then there’s ЦУЙBAH (tsuivan), a noodle dish that I can’t get enough of. All the PCTs love it.

My host mother making MAX БУУЗ

My host mom and I make husher on occasion, and БУУЗ (buuz, filled then steamed dumplings) a lot. I’ve gotten pretty good at pinching them both. The БУУЗ are really easy to make in two separate batches (a MAX [mach, meat] batch for the family and a HOГOO [norgoh, vegetable] batch for me). Occasionally I make my own meal when I want something resembling an American dish, and although my host family doesn’t usually like it they politely eat it (just like I did the first few days, before learning how to express food likes/dislikes). The care package Mom and Dad sent with herbs and spices has really broken up the food monotony and allowed me to make more authentic “home” dishes which makes me happier than words could even describe. (Also the pillow Mom and Dad sent makes me ridiculously happy. It’s definitely the little things here.) My host family has 14 YXЭР (ukher, cows) so I’ve learned a lot about the beasts.

One of the calves hangin' out by the outhouse.

I’m still terrified of them and the other PCTs laugh at me when I’m startled by one, but I’m learning to tolerate them. There’s a nightly ritual, around my house we call it “go cow” (in the early days of my language inabilities it’s how my host sister would tell me where we were going), in which we have to go round up our cows that have been roaming all day and bring them inside. This is the epitome of free-range, hormone-free, grass-fed, non-GMO meat. I still don’t know how they are able to pick out which cows are whose, but every night I see various people walking about doing just that. Host mom milks the cows and makes a variety of dairy products (none of which I’ve been able to consume), although I haven’t seen/heard of one of them being unplugged yet. My host dad did unplug a goat the other day…But more about that in a minute. Of course there have been…adjustments…In Orkhon there’s no running water (except at the shower house, our saving grace and best $1.25 I spend all week) which also means there’s no indoor plumbing. We’ve started a joke about the Mongol squat versus the American squat and how they’ve got us beat hands down. As a rule, I no longer consume beverages after 8pm in order to avoid a very dark dash to the ЖОРЛОН (jorlthon, outhouse). I live the farthest from school; it’s about a 25 minute walk.

The school

It sucks on really hot or rainy days but I’ve dropped at least one if not two pants sizes already (my jeans quite literally fall off my hips). Also because there’s no running water we have to wash all our clothes by hand in the same tumpen we bathe in. I’ve stopped wearing make-up because of the hassle of bathing/washing, although I do still wash my hair daily and paint my nails as needed. We have a thing called the “Locus of Control” here and right now we PCTs have very little control over things so washing my hair maintains part of my daily routine and painting my nails is a small comfort. Rumor has it we have a really deep well here and our water is clear and odorless (unlike some other PST sites) but we still have to run it through a filter or boil it, just in case. Because my house is so far away we actually don’t fetch water from the well, my host uncle drives the soum’s YCНИЙ MAШИН (usnii machine, water truck) and brings us our water. It’s actually pretty cool. Speaking of cool things, last Saturday we had a pretty amazing fieldtrip. Although the weather was drizzly and cool, it was a great day. We loaded up all the PCTs and their families and headed off to tour a monastery. Little did we, the PCTs, know but we were also in for a traditional Mongolian picnic feast. We pulled into an established picnic site a couple miles from the monastery and had a small snack & started a fire at about 10am. A few of the host dads (mine included) stayed back to tend the fire while the rest of us went to tour the monastery. The pictures will have to speak for themselves.

My host mother, sister and me at the Monastery.

After touring we headed back to the picnic site to find the men butchering a goat (I found out later it was the goat my host dad unplugged a few days earlier while I was in Darkhon getting booster shots) and heating rocks. They then put the hot stones and pieces of goat into two giant pots and put those pots back over the fire in a sort of inside-out/pressure cooker method. One of the pots also got carrots and potatoes.

While the goat and veggies were cooking we played Limbo and something akin to Duck Duck Grey Duck. The male PCTs also wrestled Naadam-style. We may have also consumed a few cans each of ПИBO (peav, beer) and knocked back a couple bottles of vodka (the alcohol of choice here; it’s really the only hard liquor available and widely consumed by all) as a group. When the meat was done the host moms made each of the PCTs a plate with a goat part, a potato or carrot chunk, and pickled veggie “slaw” (I got a nearly meatless rib bone, two potatoes and a whole carrot cuz my host mom rocks like that) which we all devoured. I gotta admit, it was unequivocally the best meal I’ve had since being in country. The meat was indescribably delicious. I sucked every last bit of meat off that rib.

And dunking bread into the fatty drippings at the bottom of the pots…Wow. I paid dearly for it a few hours later, but it was just so good. When the meal wrapped up we formed a circle and each PCT danced the Mongolian Waltz with a host family member before calling it a day. We loaded the cars back up and began the trek back, with only a quick stop at a sacred spring to fill water bottles with the “holy” water. I’ve had some pretty great days here, experiencing new things or teaching my host family and their friends American things, but that day was special.

My host family is taking very good care of me, and we’re learning a lot from each other. In addition to bringing tsuivan back to the States, I’ll be teaching you all a fun card game and a few other party games when I get back. The other night there was a mouse in my room and when I shrieked my host mother and sister came running only to laugh hysterically at me. That night my host sister slept on my bedroom floor. I’ve definitely got a lot to learn and adjust to still. And that’s been my experience in country so far. I miss all my family and friends back home more than I could ever say, but what I’m going though here is pretty remarkable. I hope you are all doing as well as I am. Much love from Mongolia.

-KPИCTA