soupy says

That’s how Peace Corps Volunteer Trainer (PCVT) Jesse described living in a soum. Horollith, also known as Sukhbaatar 5^th bagh, is a 200 Turigek ride from SB and has a population around 3,000. Everyone knows everyone. As PCTs, everyone knows us, but we know no one. PCV TEFL volunteer Doug lives next door to PCT Elisa. It seems he has successfully integrated into the community because he knows everything about all the trainees right along with the other soum residents. Puttering down the main drag, you’ll pass a handful of small stores,  a community center, a basketball hoop, a PC game room (no Internet), and two bus stops.  However, I am probably being a bit misleading using the term “bus stops.” You, you silly American, are thinking of a kind of bus with a schedule. (I’ll save more explanation for later because transportation deserves its own entry.) Depending on the time of day, you could see herds of sheep, goats, cattle, or teenagers. The stores basically carry the same items. However, you’ll probably pay a bit more if you go to the store with the cold Cokes. The items are mostly small treats, drinks, alcohol, and a few toiletry items. I discovered two stores that carry raisins. One store carries apples. Another carries bell peppers. If you want any more perishable goods (besides ubiquitous bread, onions, and potatoes), then you’ll need to go to SB. 

My Mongolian language improves slowly, but it improves. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we have only been studying for two weeks, and that we are supposed to still be awful. Wednesday, after our mid-class break, my teacher, Oyuna, brought in four pre-teens to chat with us. Each one sat with each of us for 15 minutes while we struggled to think of all the small talk phrases that we had learned thus far. Towards the end, the conversations usually revolved around “What do you like to eat?” “I like fruit.” It was quite a reminder of how far with have to go. It was also the most physical and mentally exhausting hour I had experienced in quite some time. When the kids left, I wanted to sleep, and the front of my brain hurt. It wasn’t a headache. My brain hurt. We still had an hour of class left. Oy.

However, the other health PCTs and I love spending three hours three days a week in health training. It is a total different experience than language. On your way home, you don’t feel like your ass has been kicked. It’s exciting: yes, this is my job! On Friday’s we drive into SB to have culture sessions with the Community Youth Development group that lives in SB 3^rd. They actually live in the city and are walking distance from the Internet, market, etc. The culture sessions are shaping up to very enlightening as well. Right now, Wednesday afternoons are free, but one of our language teachers is trying to set up optional music/dance workshops. As many of your know, musical talent and rhythm do not fall under “Stacey’s fortes.” However, I do have have fun being bad.

I bit of the food update and clarification. “Salad” can refer to a variety of dishes. None of them resembling the plate of fresh greens that I long for. The “salad” that am served  contains mostly cabbage with the occasional appearance of a yam, bell pepper or cucumber. The dressing consists of oil and vinegar. Friday’s “salad” resembled American pasta salad. The Mongolian mayo is lighter. It was mostly pasta with small bits of cucumber, tomato, and ham. Now, ham is not the product of decreased porkers that you know. Well, there might be pig in there (probably not). Ham is sort of like the spawn of sausage and baloney. If you are served slices of it, you can eat around the pockets of fat.  Mongolians don’t consider Ham meat. If you say you don’t eat meat, you’ll get ham. You want to eat meat.

Today I had some time to chat with the Peace Corps Intern. She is Mongolian, but she spent nine months in the United States as a foreign exchange student (thanks to a Soros scholarship). She told me that Mongolians don’t see fruit and veggies as filling. They are not the main part of the meal – only a supplement. Fruit is commonly seen as a desert item. That makes so much sense. For a people that have to survive a harsh winter, cabbage won’t cut it. There was a bowl of fruit in the fridge, but I devoured it quickly. I got to eat plums! Plums!

Traditionally, summer is considered the “white months” and diary products are heavily consumed. This isn’t very true for the non-herder folks like my family. However, yesterday for lunch I ate “Milk with Rice.” It’s not exactly how it sounds: it does have a few raisins. It was also tasty except for the massive amount of rice I was expected to consume. My family gets its yogurt and milk supply from their grandparents who own cows. The fresh yogurt blows any corn-syrup drenched Yoplait product out of the water.

A great thing about this country: it’s karaoke all the time. Mongolian love to sing. They sing along whenever they know the words and will usually sing to themselves or with others at random moments throughout the day. When a American song plays on Russian MTV, I am encouraged to sing along and teach my sisters the words. However, I am not up on my top 40 hip hop lyrics. Thus, I usually can’t sing too much. My siblings were disappointed that I didn’t know more than “My lovely lady humps.” I did catch my older, little sister trying to sing the chorus to “Ghetto Superstar.” I somehow managed to pull the chorus from some crevasse of my brain. It may not be 100% correct, but it is close enough. She had forgot the “Ghetto” part, and now the song is known just as “Superstar.” Every once in a while, Bimba requests my personal rendition of the chorus.

Which comes to a sad fact of life: you cannot escape shitty American music.

My flash drive containing a couple of wonderful posts covering the last two weeks doesn’t seem to want to open on this computer. You’ll have to wait for a real update.

 However, I am headed to Darkhan on Monday for “Mid-Center Days” with all of the other PCTs. There will be informational sessions and a 4th of July celebration.

I wil try to upload pics in Darkhan. The Internet is cheaper there.

I've been with my host family a week. Tomorrow will be two weeks in Mongolia. Each day moves by a bit faster than the one before it.

Overall, the host family is good. Bimba, whose the youngest at 10, has become attached to my hip. She has become my greatest teacher. She will often sit down while I study and go through dialogues or correct my pronunciation. She'll often walk me to school telling me words (I won't remember most of them) or teaching me the color names on the Uno cards. Bata, 16, made a vocab list for me (of words she thought were important). She posted one copy in my room and another in the living room. My 17 year old host brother isn't around too much but has joined in for the occasional Uno game. My dad totally looks like a wrestler. I'm told he is a firefighter, but as far as I know, he never works. It seems he goes out of town to wrestle over the weekends. During the week, he cooks lunch (and sometimes breakfast). My mom comes home from school and cooks dinner.

Which brings me to the food. I have not been eating plates and plates of mutton. And thus, my plans to bulk up for the body building circuit due to the excessive doses of protein seem to have been thwarted. For most of the week, I was feed plates of carbs: rice, pasta, and bread. You might be thinking, “oh carb heaven for Stacey.” With this diet, I haven't seen a piece of fruit since last Sunday (the day I arrived), and before yesterday, my vegetable intake had been less than a cup. However, my mom went to the market on Friday night, and I have been enjoying tomatoes, cucumbers, and Mongolian version of coleslaw (they call it “salad”). I almost jumped for joy upon seeing this morning's breakfast: eggs, tomatoes, and cucumbers. There was also a side of the fried dumplings that I didn't finish from last night's dinner. I didn't touch those. They are tasty, but I haven't yet communicated properly that I don't require the caloric intake of a heifer. Of course, the veggie intake is not near the level that I would truly enjoy, but I can live. I am still on a quest for more fruit.

Language class has its ups and downs. After four hours, I am totally drained. I usually go home, eat lunch and take a nap. And I've never been much of a napper. Starting this week, in the afternoon, we will have technical sessions relating to health, culture and other topics. It'll be interesting to see how I'll fit in study time, family bonding time, and de-stress time into the mix when I'll be in class all day. Currently my trouble spot is listening comprehension. I might ask my language teacher to come by next week and work on it with me. That's right, not only does my class only have four students, my teacher will come by and tutor if we ask.

Right now I'm doing OK. On Thursday my body told me that I was really stressed out. I hadn't really realized it that until then. I was pretty crabby the rest of the day, but I took some me-time and chill time with my sisters. Another Trainee (PCT), Melinda, lives across the street from me, and I can drop by if I need some English time. Yesterday, some Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) that trained here two years ago visited their old host families before going back to the states. They showed us how to get to the river. That will come in handy when it gets 100 degrees.

I can't see myself anyplace but here, and I am excited to spend the next two years in Mongolia. Earlier this week, in language class, I thought, “Wow. I sitting here, and it doesn't cost me a penny.” Well, it does indirectly through taxes, but I won't get into that. It's hard to get too down when you go home, walk through the gate and have Bimba, arms in the air, running to greet you. Yesterday, I looked at her and noticed her perpetual pony tail and been shifted to bun, that looked remarkably similar to the bun that I sported. That same day she started carrying around water. We are quite a pair, me with my nalgene and her with a reused vitamin juice bottle.

Nah, I'm doing better than OK. I'm happy.

The best way to sum up my experience thus far is this: a giant pendulum swings back and forth from feeling total exhilaration to feeling completely overwhelmed.

After LA, we rode on the fabulous Korean Airlines. I enjoyed bimbimap but saved the red pepper paste for a bland day. During a two and a half hour layover in Seoul, I managed to eat kimchi soup, found some reasonably priced dried squid, but was unable to find anything with red bean paste. After a short flight, we landed in Chinghes Khan International Airport. With one terminal and two baggage claim carousels (only one that functioned), the name is much more intimidating than the actual place. After collecting our bags, we were greeted by a mob that appeared to have just robbed a thrift store (leopard print shirts, sombreros and more). That mob just turned out to be current volunteers. A glimpse into what I will be a year into the future? Time will tell. We got on buses and headed to a ger camp just out of town. We arrived at the ger camp just past 1AM. My ger camp mates and I enjoyed some cookies and crackers that sat waiting for us before we went to bed.

The next morning I woke to Mongolia. Green rolling hills. Endless blue sky. Grazing horses and camels. Beautiful.

We spent two nights total at the camp. There were some introductions, first forays into Mongolian food, hiking and sleeping. Everyone enjoyed the decompression time. After the camp, we headed north to the second largest city in Mongolia, Darkhan. On the drive, we got a chance to see the outskirts of UB and some soums (small towns). I can't describe how I felt seeing it all. Let's just say it was quite a different feeling than the camping trip-esque experience of the ger camp.

We have spent the last three nights at the Darkhan hotel. I have enjoyed the hot showers. These days in Darkhan have consisted of mostly informational meetings. You are thinking “Yawn” but, I have throughly enjoyed almost all of them. However, have can you not have a good time when your Medical Officer says phrases like, “If you are a tick freak, go ahead and collect them” or “There are no dogs here. Just ass biters.”

Last night I stayed out until it got dark at 10:45pm playing frisbee. Or as I will now call it: "The International Game of Friendship." A Mongolian boy no older than 10 joined us in the game. He started out barely being able to throw, but by the end, he could out throw most of us.

I feel like I'm on vacation. I think that will change tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I am going to my host family with four and half hours of Mongolian language class under my belt. I have sinking feeling it will all leave my brain as soon as I walk in the door. I will be living in a wooden house (no indoor plumbing, of course) in a soum near Sukhbataar, 20km from the Russian border. I have two younger host sisters and a younger host brother. My host mom is a librarian, and my host dad is a firefighter. My host dad also wrestles during Naadam. He goes by "the lion."

Until mid-August I will be training with my fellow health volunteers. We will have four hours of language class (two classes of four) followed by technical / cultural training in the afternoon. I am quite sad to be see all of the 57 volunteers split up between different soums. However, the PC trainers have said they will pass notes to other volunteers in different soums so we can communicate with each other. It's like high school but with cars.

Last week feels like it exisited in a different time. This morning the Country Director of Peace Corps Mongolia told the group that he wanted to update us on some world news: the US killed Zarqawi in an air strike. In that moment I felt so disconnected with the world, and I've only been gone a week.

Oh, and horse is a delicious, delicious meat.

I am in the lobby of the Four Points Sheraton LAX. I am not staying at the Four Points Sheraton LAX, but this hotel has free Wi-Fi and my hotel next door does not. That’s an example of the ingenuity Peace Corps looks for in their volunteers.

These two days have been a whirwind of emotions. Adrenaline fueled the first few hours in in LA, but by the time staging meetings got going, I had calmed down some. Since yesterday morning, I have completed Peace Corps staging, saw Katy for fifteen mins (10 mins of that was hugging), ate In-and-Out (I dipped french fries in my vanilla shake!), ate a Cadberry Boost bar sent to my hotel by Erin, and met many very cool people. Last night we went to a hotel bar for dinner, but tonight we are taking a shuttle to Manhattan Beach for some food and beverages. Tomorrow is on to Mongolia.