Month: June 2016

“Everything is going to be alright,” says my host mother. “Anna will live in Mongolia for 2 years and you will live,” is pretty much what she says to comfort me, especially when I think about the -40 degree cold winters in this country.

I feel like I’m 9 years old again and carrying my black backpack as I wait for my mother to pick me up from school so we can go home and have dinner. Except now, I’m 23 years old and I’m waiting outside of my Mongolian school with my red backpack, awaiting my host mother so she can drive me home for dinner.  Sometimes she is already there and other times I am anxiously hoping she won’t forget about me as I watch my friends disappear with their own host mothers and host siblings.

I have been living in the Land of Blue Sky with my host family for two weeks and there has been plenty of blue sky. There has been some drizzle but for the most part, hot and dry. Dust gets kicked up in the air as I walk to school or when a Prius drives past.

On a grey and foggy morning on 4 June, 51 Peace Corps trainees hugged and said goodbye for the summer. Groups of 8 to 10 trainees will be spending the next three months in different soums and aimags throughout Mongolia. With our summer bags, large water filters, medical kits, and our sleeping bags, my group of 9 crushed ourselves onto our little bus that would take us to our host families. We will not be seeing each other again until August for our swearing-in ceremony.

Upon arrival, our host families were all awaiting us by the bridge. One by one, under a hot sun in the middle of a Mongolian valley, just a few hours away from the Russian boarder, we were greeted by our family. Each family gave us a blue, ceremonial scarf called a Khata. We all accepted a Khata along with a bowl of milk to sip from. Mongolian Khatas are blue in honor of the blue sky.  Then I had to throw the milk towards the mountain. My host family doesn’t know English and I don’t know Mongolian. This will definitely be a fascinating summer.

I have my own separate house next to the main house – my “lila stuga.” I have a bed, a table, a green dresser, a large glass cupboard, and a stove to make fires in. My family even decorated the walls with green floral wallpaper. The yard is large with an outhouse in the far corner and a fearsome looking guard dog. I’ve named him Greywind because he reminds me of the direwolf from Game of Thrones. Surrounding my soum are mountains as the Mongolians refer to them as. I just think of them as very large hills. My family is incredibly nice. My host mother is a math teacher. My host father is a gym teacher but is spending the summer working on trains. I have a 4-year-old sister and a 5-year-old brother whom I enjoy playing with. They are my little monkeys. In addition, my host mother’s niece, Chika, is always at the house.

As one PCT said, “The next two years of our life is going to consist of us just sitting, smiling, and nodding.”

Communicating with my host family requires a lot of good humor and patience. We are drawing pictures, acting, rapidly gesturing, and speaking in broken English and Mongolian. There is great excitement when we finally get our points across. I can already see myself as the next Charades champion back home. As of yet, I haven’t eaten anything strange or out-of-the-ordinary. I eat a lot of eggs, rice, meat, buuz, hassah, tsuiwan, pickles, soups, and apples. Mmmmmm, nothing like hot soup and hot tea on a hot day.

I joke with my family how living in Mongolia is going to be a lot like living on Lövön for two years. I bathe in a tumpun, I walk everywhere, and I have to re-wear my clothes. It takes awesome skill to create a new look with the same clothing. My soum is dusty in the summer. Horses, cows, dogs, and pigs meander all over the place. My school is a white building that is a 15-minute walk from my home. Close to the school are small supermarkets, an Internet Café where you can also play ping pong, a bank, the government building where I got to meet the governor, basketball courts and small parks, a post office, and a small hospital and police station.

My schedule for the next three months consists of Mongolian language lessons that begin early at 9 am with Aagie and Bogie. I’m chuffed to bits now that I know the Cyrillic alphabet but we laugh with each other because it feels like we’re 5 and learning how to read all over again. Everyone just gets a blank look in their eyes when we’re trying to remember how to say something. We look off into space, then there’s a moment of silence, and finally an “Oh, yeah,” once we remember. No English is allowed during our lessons. Mongolian is tough.

 

Then we have a lunch break from 1 to 2:30, followed by more lessons from 2:30 to 5:30. The later lessons consist of how to become efficient English teachers, how to integrate ourselves and to feel at home in Mongolia, and other important topics. During the month of June, we will be teaching micro-lessons. In groups of threes, we are teaching English to various age groups ranging from 5^th grade to 12^th grade. So far, I’ve had enthusiastic students. In my 5^th to 6^th grade class, there was a young boy who I nicknamed “boy genius” because he already knew all the vocabulary. He came up to me at the end of class and told me he had been born in Ireland.

 

Here are 13 highlights:

1. I will never get used to the outhouses. I will simply endure it as I hope I never drop anything, like my phone, down the 10-foot hole that lays below me, including myself. My legs will get super strong from all the squatting.
2. Once a week, we travel 2 hours by bus to Sukbartan where our Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMO) educates us more on what to do in case of an emergency. Our first trip was a 2-hour heinous bus trip. The road was still under construction so we had to go cross-country. I was so sore by the end of the trip and ecstatic that I hadn’t eaten a big breakfast. But during our 2^nd trip, it went a lot smoother. We were able to travel on an actual road. Seeing a black paved road caused my heart to leap with joy. Tears came to my eyes.
3. It’s tough finding body lotion. All the PC girls are becoming a little frantic because we can’t find body lotion anywhere.
4. I’m impressed with the food selection in the supermarkets. I have found Nutella, various jams, plenty of fruit and vegetables, and Pringles. I read how I would have trouble finding fruit and vegetables but there are plenty here. I expect this might change come winter time. The one thing that always throws me for a loop is seeing a massive haunch of meat just sitting in a cooler for anyone to pick up. While there is a variety of food a person can find, my meals usually consist of rice, meat, and egg.
5. Mongolians love sports. Whenever I meet someone, they would ask me for my name, where I’m from, and “Do you like sports?” I’ve played basketball twice already and more people always come to the court when they hear the sound of the ball bouncing – either on foot or by horse!
6.   I know how to make a dung fire and a wood fire. My little house gets nice and toasty.
7. With three other PCTs, I walked to the top of a hill where I got to see my entire soum and beyond. At the top of the hills are Ovoos or a cairn, human made piles or stacks of stone and wood.  You must walk around an Ovoo clockwise three times in order to have a safe journey. Then you must place your own stone in the Ovoo.
8. There is nothing soft to sit on. Bus seats are hard. Chairs are hard. The beds are hard. It’s like sitting on rough rock all the time.
9. I’m awful at making buuz. There is a certain way to pinch the dough so the dough looks like flower petals on the top. My host family pinches the dough so quickly!
10. I went swimming in the river. The water only came up to my knees so by swimming I mean that I submerged myself in the water. It was an idyllic scene. A herd of white and brown horses were directly across from me on the other side. Also, skipping stones is an art form that I have yet to master. My stones just go, “Ka-plonk.”
11. When Molly and I are out walking together, cars actually slow down to look at us. One blonde is interesting but two blondes is a phenomenon.
12. I would give anything to have a margarita.

 

I have definitely had my fair share of ups and downs.

Yes, not being able to communicate is challenging and can be frustrating. Yes, internet is hard to find. The school had internet for a while but it has disappeared on us. Probably because a teacher saw all 9 of us sitting in the hallway reading our emails and checking Facebook.

Yes, I have to draw my own water in order to clean myself. Yes, I’m afraid that I will fail as a teacher. Yes, I’m always cracking my head on the low doorways. Yes, I’m afraid that I will fall in the outhouse. Yes, people stare at me constantly like I’m an exhibit in a museum. Yes, I miss home. I miss my mom and dad. I miss walking around Lincoln Park and going to David’s Tea and the various cafes. Yes, I’m afraid that I will never find some wretched body lotion and my skin will turn into fish scales.

But Mongolia is beautiful. I have been here for less than a month and I know that I’m still settling in. All PCTs are on a family plan and we can call each other for free upon our Nokia phones. Talking, laughing, and seeing pigs snuffling along the roadside always helps to pull me out my ruts. With time, everything will get better but for now, I will continue taking one day at a time.

“We are now one big family,” says my host mother to me.