"This isn't who it would be, if it wasn't who it is."

"HELLO. TEACHER!"

The classroom of 10th graders greet me together as they stand at attention next to their desks. I ask them how they are and they respond in robotic unison.

"I'M. FINE. THANKS. AND. YOU?!?!"

I tell them I'm fine and let them take their seats knowing full well that any other response would bring on confused grunts, blank stares, and possible brain aneurisms. Today's lesson, brought to you by our schools mandated British English textbook: Cell Phones! Complete with a plethora of useful vocabulary: display, buttons, accessory, message, SIM card and more! Usually I like to steer the lesson in my own direction away from such non-applicable themes (entire chapters devoted to contortionists and Chinese foot binding for example) but Munkhkherlen, my counterpart, convinced me to follow the book on this one. So using my own phone as a prop I went through the pronunciation of each word. Somewhere during "blue tooth headset" (a device I've yet to see in Mongolia) a student shouted out a question. I understood and didn't quite know how to answer. Munkhkherlen translated, taking my hesitation for not understanding. "Justin teacher, what is your phone number?" Other students quickly echoed the request, and I cringed at the thought of thirty something 10th graders calling me whenever they got bored. "It is a good idea, if they need help or want a tutor", Munkhkherlen whispered to me. Thats when the light bulb went on in my head. I'll give it to them in English! That'll severely reduce the amount of kids who actually get my number! No sooner had I finished reciting it then one of the class's more advanced students shouted out each digit in clear Mongolian. I grimaced as I watched pens scratch against paper. I nodded to myself satisfied that everyone else in the room was satisfied then picked up my chalk. I turned around and placed the chalk against the board, poised to write the next word. I was stopped before I could even make a mark. The familiar noise reverberating from my pocket.

My phone was ringing.

"Is there anybody out there?"

New Jersey

So many planes.
On a hot summer day me and Jackie lay out on the front lawn, listening to music and enjoying the fresh air. Blue skies, lazy clouds inching across our vision. Nothing hampered our view.....except the planes. Big, small, commercial, military, high and low their contrails crisscrossed through the blue, streaking it white, turning the sky plaid. "How many is that?" I wondered aloud as another appeared on the horizon. Within ten minutes of looking up, without craning our necks or even straining our eyes, upwards of twenty planes had crossed within our eyesight.

I back-stepped, regaining my balance, tilting my head further skyward. Not a cloud stained the blue above me. The sky seemed so expansive the plane seemed to move at a snails pace heading northwest. Mongolians eyed me suspiciously as they passed me on the street, no doubt thinking, What is this dumb American doing now? As I stumbled and swayed from side to side straining my neck to follow an airplane. If this were the first one I'd seen I would have thought the aircraft lost, having wandered off its flight path the pilots having decided to make the Hail Mary decision and fly into the unknown. I could count on one hand the number of planes I have seen since I've been here. Always flying in the same direction, I've hypothesized they're traveling from Beijing to somewhere in eastern Russia (Irkutsk? Chita?), no layover in Mongolia. The huge airliner full of its business people, vacationers, and travelers, moving from one big city to the next. It seemed I could look out into infinity, blue sky, flat steppe, me standing in little Omnodelger with its wooden houses, and little white gers, and tiny dirt roads. I stared back up again as the plane came directly overhead. It gave me a bittersweet sense of isolation.
I wonder how many of them know they're over Mongolia?
Do they know they're on top of a town?
..........
No one knows I'm even here.

"And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me, shine on until tomorrow."

Blinding light. The old floodlight, its protective lens missing, illuminated my face and the entire stage. I squinted out into the crowd, their faces lost in the bright white, I knew they were there, the town's culture center was filled to bursting. All had come to see the teachers perform for Mongolian Independence Day. The holiday itself would fall two days later on Saturday but the town had elected to hold the performance on Thursday, November 24th, Thanksgiving. I swallowed hard and glanced down at the loaned electric guitar I was instructed to play with. "Designed In the USA!" the headstock bragged. I stole another glance at the soundbox to see Damdin, the school's P.E. teacher and musical efficinato, eyeing me encouragingly. I inched a little closer to the microphone and summoned some Mongolian for the short speech I prepared.

Earlier that month:

My body jerked left and right as the two tailors and one child tugged on the felt belt that held my new Mongolian deel together. Finally when they were satisfied and I felt as though all the air had been squeezed from my lungs they took a step back and held a mirror in front of me. The long flowing robe went town to just past my knees, held together with simple cloth buttons and a felt belt, I was assured by the tailor that the traditional everyday Mongolian wear would be warm and make me look like a proper citizen. I expressed my gratitude for her hard and quick work in making my deel then left to head back to school. Looking for one of my counterparts I wanted to find a way to express my gratitude to the teachers and my director as well. When I was told I needed a deel for the upcoming Mongolian holiday my director promptly had the materials purchased from Ulaanbaatar and brought back to our town. When I offered payment he refused, "It is a gift from our school." So when I finally ran into Bolormaa, my fellow English teacher I asked her how I should thank everyone. She told me there would be a teacher's meeting that very night. Perfect.

Two days before concert:

"Angle hel duu!" (English song!) Damdin exclaimed excitedly when I asked him what song I should perform for the concert after just learning it was two days away. After he narrowed it down to three English songs "all Mongolian's know" I opted out of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", and decided to return to what has slowly been turning into my Peace Corps alma matar. As well as my performance I planned on giving a surprise intro speech to thank the school, as the teacher's meeting, unsurprisingly never occurred. I had practicing to do and new Mongolian words to learn.

Thanksgiving:

I cleared my throat and laughed nervously looking out over the silent crowd. I started out as planned, thanking my director, the teachers, and the school staff for all chipping in to buy me such a warm and beautiful deel. I carried on to thank the whole town for hosting me, helping me, and being so understanding and generous. For letting me be a part of their lives and always making sure my ger was warm. Unbeknownst to the attentive townspeople I was sharing with them the true meaning of the American holiday they knew nothing about. When I finished they clapped and I looked down to the soundbox at Damdin. He gave me a nod and the man sitting next to him, whom before the show mimed playing a Jimi Hendrix style guitar solo asking if I would play the real thing, gave me a thumbs up. He's gonna be disappointed, I thought. I strummed a C chord and played.

After the show, me and Dakraa walked home together from the culture center. Within the first several paces of our walk we exhausted the typical idle conversation our language barrier would allow. "How did you like the concert?" "Are you cold?" As we walked in silence I glanced around the dark town, seeing different shades of grey smoke billowing from the tops of gers and houses, to wisp up into a night sky full of stars. In the quiet cold night Dakraa hummed a tune from the concert as we neared our yard. Recognizing it immediately I joined in, together we hummed "Let It Be" as our homes came into view.

You gotta wait a minute, wait a minute, Mr. Postman, deliver the letter, the sooner the better!"

The sky explodes with sound as the three F-16's streak overhead leaving colored contrails of red, white, and blue in their wake. Awestruck I drop my axe next to the pile of wood and look skyward over the roof of my ger. The jets are followed by a lumbering cargo plane and as its shadow covers my hashaa a hatch opens and a brown box descends to earth, letting loose a gigantic parachute bearing the stars and stripes as it lands with a thud at my feet. A helicopter whirls in place over my head, a cable falls to ground and a lone solider slides down to stand in front me. Red, white, and blue fireworks are shot off from somewhere beyond the mountains. He produces a clipboard, "Package, sign here."

"Sign here." I'm roused from my stupor as the mailman repeats himself again in Mongolian and pushes the clipboard across the counter, tapping the paper with a pen. The fanfare and fantastical scenarios often play out in my head every time I hear I've got mail waiting for me at the post office. I always feel like a little kid waiting to open his presents when I stand on one side of the counter staring at the mail on the windowsill I surely know is for me. Waiting anxiously for Gombojamts, our towns no-nonsense, and only postal employee to relinquish my prize to me. He'll often, as if sensing my eagerness, test my patience. "Watch my room for me, I'll be back." Taking back the now signed clipboard he walks around from the counter and exits the post office. Leaving me alone to stare at my parcel or letter still resting on the windowsill. After reading (or trying to) every poster on the wall multiple times and obsessively fantasizing about what my mail could contain he finally strolls back in and calmly sits down at his chair. Finally after some casual rustling with papers he'll push across the counter what I came for. I quickly thank him and snatch it up and bolt out the door.

I owe much, and am very grateful for the Mongolians I have met in this country. Since my arrival they have shown me guidance, generosity, love, and at the least have tolerated me. I would not have made it long without their unquestioning assistance. Though my real gratitude is to those of you back home, who often send me your written or packaged support. Whether its news of life back in the states or a package of American foodstuffs (Velvetta never tasted so good) it gives me a little slice of back home, lifts my morale and spirits, and reminds me of the life I'll return to. So to all my family and friends, thank you for all the love, support, and well wishes. Your responses are coming, I can assure you, Gombojomts is even more finicky with outgoing mail, so hang tight! All of the Mongolian kindness would count for nothing if I didn't know I had all of you behind me. Being so isolated, in one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, knowing I haven't been forgotten and getting so much love from an ocean away, means the world to me. I could never express it enough.

Happy Thanksgiving.

"'I'm gonna smash my way out that's all', cried the bird and smashed from wall to wall, 'There must be some way out!', he cried, and his desperation echoed down the hall, just another bird in a house, dying to get out."

Flashback: Orkhon

A lazy summer evening. Me and my host family sat in the living room. Me in the large comfy armchair, which was always conceded to me without my asking. My host mother sat on the couch next to Jarga and Mogi, while my oldest brother Moojig played a computer game from the nineties. The sun, fighting to stay skyward as it did every summer evening struggled to keep the last of its light above the mountains. The TV droned Mongolian into my ears that I couldn't understand, moths hovered around a single lightbulb. I was roused from my stupor by a familiar flapping. Not one but two tiny chickadee sized birds flew from the room with the pingpong table into the family room.

In other houses, even in Mongolia this may have seemed a peculiar occurrence, but in my house it was commonplace. My mother would often boast of how safe Orkhon was, "Not like the city!" she'd exclaim. As a result our door would idly sit open all hours of the day. Besides the frequent Mongolian visitors, everyday would also welcome in birds who would flap and hop about investigating every part of the tiny house. On more then one occasion I would have to shoo them from my room after their poor sense of direction would get them hopelessly trapped.

So I didn't give it much of a second glance when the two little birds fluttered above my head and began repetitively darting from one corner to the next looking for the exit. With the sun down the two little birds had no beacon to guide their usual way to the door. So they flapped and bounced off the windows and walls until my oldest brother growled something under his breath and both Mogi and Jarga got to their feet and began trying to coral the two little birds to the doorway. Jarga wielding a broom and Mogi waving his shirt only caused the birds to seek different routes in their endless circumnavigation of the room. They clattered behind the TV, flew through flowers and hopped over the family's altar. Dipping and diving over my two brothers heads as they laughed, side stepping and ducking out of the way.

It was too much for me to not partake. I stood up, discarded my shirt and began working up a sweat trying to shoo two birds from a house. We laughed jostling between each other trying to get in the right strategic position to get the birds towards the door. Mogi, who having climbed on the arm of the couch to improve his stature, hobbled backwards on one leg loosing his equilibrium as a bird wizzed past. Jarga, one minute swinging the broom formidably would cringe and transform it into a mock helmet when a bird dived too close. All the while my mother rocked back in forth with laughter on the couch at our comical attempts. The irony did not escape me, here I was with people born of some of the best herdsmen in the world, attempting to herd two tiny chickadees. Finally a bird clattered against the door frames and fluttered out into the night. Me and my brothers, exhausted, panting, and sweating, clapped each other on the back in congratulations. The noise carried on as we realized the second bird was still trapped. We all exchanged tired glances. My host mother having gone silent, stood up, quietly walked over to the windowsill where the tiny bird had found a perch and calmly picked it up. The bird did not struggle or chirp, merely resigning itself to be carried to wherever my host mother chose. Me and my brothers watched dumbfounded as she then casually walked to the doorway and released the bird into the darkness. She came back into the room and no longer able to keep a straight face burst out laughing. Me and my brothers couldn't help but join in. "Yaaj?"(How?) I asked. Still laughing through teary eyes she replied, "Bi eej baina."

"I'm Mom."

"While walking down a gravel road winter came and turned their breath to stone."

I came to a dead stop as I exited my ger one morning. I had barely cleared the threshold when I was greeted by a sideways flying mixture of ice, rain, and snow. My ger, my hashaa, my whole town was covered in a thin layer of white. The biting wind, unhindered by obstacles such as trees, tall buildings, or mountains, seemed to stampede across the open steppe, propelling itself right into my face. I quickly back-stepped inside, yanking on the door against the blustery resistance. Maybe today is a day for gloves.

Whenever I think that I've been forgotten, that I surely won't last another week against unfamiliar elements, a cohort of Mongolians will reveal themselves to show me that they still got my back. Later on that day when the weather still refused to relent, I stood in my doorway looking helplessly at the pile of wood in my hashaa, wet, icy, and inflammable. I gazed back inside my ger, my felt roof now saturated and soaking through with sleet, and frozen rain. I can almost hear the cavalry bugle when at that moment six Mongolian men, no doubt sent at my school director's request came marching through my hashaa gate. They aren't empty handed, a huge plastic tarp, a cast iron stove, and a sack of coal. I watch in grateful astonishment as they immediately set to work. Two men replace my old apparently "summer stove" with the cast iron one, telling me that now I can burn both wood and coal. The others begin wrapping the tarp around the roof of my ger waterproofing it from the still bitter weather. The wind whipping and blowing they mill about laughing and joking with me, "Mongolia is beautiful, right?" "You like the snow, don't you?" One man reaches down and pelts another with a snowball. "See, its nice" he exclaims. After they finish I stand with them as they share a cigarette, I thank them over and over again, and as they go to leave one man explains to me that I will thank him again when it gets cold out. I shudder at the thought instead of the already frigid temperature.

Later on that very same day, the sun returned to the sky, the weather let up and the temperature rose. Within an hour the snow had melted away, it was as if the storm had never happened. As I strolled back to my new and improved ger from the store I gazed out over the roofs, fences, and gers. The distant mountains had been painted white, giving them a different depth and scope I hadn't noticed before. The coming of winter had left its mark after all.

"Oh and there's a feelin' runnin' through you. Oh and then you're smiling like a Buddha."

Teaching can be exhausting.  Usually after a minimum of three hours of teaching in a row I'm pretty shot.  Reprimanding boys getting into free for all fights, showering the only person in class with candy because she was the only one that did the homework, warding off the horde of hands eager to pull a letter of the alphabet out of a hat because they don't understand that, in fact everyone will get a turn.  Peppered in these times of chaos are moments that make me covet, appreciate, and value my experience.  They're moments that make me smile in ways I didn't think I could.

Friday's 5th grade lesson involved the genitive case.  I decided to best illustrate this by including some photos of home to modal my grammar point.  "My brother's name is Mitchell."  Gesture to the photo of my brother, point taken.  The lesson started out with me attempting to explain how in English the "'s" designates possession.  I got the usual half paying attention, half "lets throw something at the kid in front me"classroom response.  Next I wrote a short paragraph on the board, each describing the names and titles of the people in the pictures I would display.  Mother, father, brother, grandmother, grandfather.  Then came the time for the unveiling.  One by one I taped the pictures up on the board, giving them a caption of what member of the family they were.  As I stood with my back turned, taping up my small little family tree I heard silent gasps from around the room.  Hushed murmurs and awed expressions, you would have thought I just revealed the Arc of the Covenant.  I turned around to a wide eyed, curious class.  Kids in the back stood up straining to see, while others supported themselves on the shoulders of kids in front of them stretching higher to get a peak at my American family.  Finally, one of the students in the back said quickly to me in Mongolian, "Teacher, I can't see."  I gestured with my hand for him to come closer and get a better look.

Little did I know, he was apparently speaking for the whole class.  Almost in unison all thirty 5th graders got up from their seats and surged forward towards the board.  I quickly sidestepped out of the way as they pressed up against the chalkboard.  Crowding around, pointing, and chattering excitedly to each other.  Kids in the back stood on tip toes to peer over the kids in front.  Short kids clambering for position hopped up and down for a better look.    They ran their fingers over the pictures, studying every part of this different lifestyle they could only get a small taste of in photographic form.  I watched fascinated by their fascination.  I pulled my camera from my backpack and snapped a few pictures.  I noticed my face hurt.  I don't know when I had started smiling, but I couldn't stop.

"Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. I am the......"

My door buckles on its hinges as Tuya, my hashaa neighbor and Dakraa's wife bursts into my ger.  She gives me a cheerful hello, and as I go to return the greeting I trail off as I notice her head swinging from right to left, her eyes scanning my little round room.  She's looking for something.  I ask her whats the matter, and it takes me a moment to piece together her reply in my head.  "I heard you went to the store today, you bought eggs?"  I got up and pointed out a bag of five eggs I purchased earlier at the local market.  She eyed them then held them aloft.  "These eggs are bad, eggs from the city are bad."  In my head I tried to decipher what that meant, Would I get sick if I ate them?  Could there have been some kind of egg recall? (As if such a thing existed in Mongolia).  "Come" she said "We'll get you some good eggs." Deciding that the egg recall scenario didn't make much sense I tried to object.  "No, its ok, I'll eat these eggs."  She glared at me, "No, those eggs are garbage, come."  So we hopped in her white van and drove about five minutes down the road.  We pulled into a hashaa that contained a wooden house, a ger, and a large pen that housed many chickens and a couple turkeys.  We got out and she brought me over to the pen.  "These eggs are the best!"  She exclaimed.  An old man exited the house and strolled over to where we were standing.  He greeted me and shook my hand.  Tuya turned to me, "This is Dakraa's father, you will buy your eggs from him now."
So I would.
I had found the "Eggman".

"This is the house. This is the place. You can take your shelter, and you can come on in."

Classes are in full swing now, and I've tried to give myself some sort of routine, despite not really having a schedule.  Its been almost a full month since I arrived here in Omnodelger, and things are finally getting more social for me.  After class Friday, I was strolling home, when two of my 11th grade students ran to catch up with me.  The two boys flanked either side of me and asked where I was going.  I said I was going home.  They exchanged looks with each other then one of the boys chimed in "Can we come too?"  So I hosted my two students, gave them coffee, and боов (its like a nugget of bread) and we played a Mongolian card came.  I won twice, afterwards they insisted I play guitar, so i went through a quick verse of a tune when one of the boys spotted the shagai set Mogi gave me.  I'd never turn down a game of shagai, so we moved my coffee table and the three of us played the traditional Mongolian game of flicking sheep bones so they connect with the same corresponding way that other bones are lying.  I lost, (which is rare, I used to beat Mogi, quite often.)  After the game was done, they thanked me for having them and left.

Now for a note on some cultural mores in Mongolia that conflict with some of our norms.  In Mongolia the concept of knocking doesn't exist.  You want to see how your friend is doing?  Think you might drop by and say hey to a relative?  Sure thing, come on in!  Your presence is announced by the straining of the door on its hinges as you step into the room giving a cheerful greeting.  This concept has even irritatingly carried over to the school as well.  Standing teaching a class, people are constantly popping their heads in, a student looking for a friend, a teacher checking to see if the room is empty, a school staff member looking for a bucket.  Glaring at them seems to have no effect either, in time I'll figure something out.  The concept back home in my ger doesn't bother me so much, my haasha family will frequently just come in to say hey, see if I'm hungry, or get confirmation that yes it is in fact getting cold out.  The hard adjustment for me, to this concept is the reverse.  Growing up at home in the US, knocking has always been the polite, respectful way of entering a closed room.  As a result I struggle entering rooms.  Part of me wants to knock softly and ask permission to enter, the other half of me wants to take advantage and run around town busting through doors Kramer style.  The hybrid result is me nervously knocking softly then immediately entering.  No problems so far.

So Friday night, I had my first random visitor.  One of the men who helped set up my ger, who does some kind of repair work at the school dropped by.  He wanted to play cards.  So we did, we played about four hands and I lost every one of them.  I still had a lot of fun, he knows no English but he was very patient with my Mongolian and corrected me when I needed it.  He left saying we would play again soon, then rubbed his two fingers together and exclaimed "Maybe, for money?"  Then he laughed and said he was kidding, I apparently need to get better first.

Just when I thought my day had been social enough, my door swung open yet again and in walked an entire Mongolian family, father, mother, and a teenage boy.  I recognized the boy from one of my other 11th grade classes but I'd never seen his parents before.  They quickly sat down around my coffee table, I stopped what I was doing and scrambled up to get them coffee and tea.  We sat and I chatted with them the best I could, what I did that day, did I work a lot, the weather, commending my fire making skills.  The visit was all well and nice but I was still left wondering what compelled them to come into my ger.  Just as I was finishing this thought the mother nudged her son on the shoulder.  Both parents looked expectedly at him as if saying, "Go on."  The son who had been quiet through the whole conversation looked at me nervously, then started in English, "I want..."  He shook his head frustrated, and produced a slip of paper from his pocket.  He gazed at it for a second then read the question he had prepared, "I....want...to learn....the guitar."  Taken by surprise, I quickly did the translation of what I wanted to say in Mongolian in my head.  Taking my hesitation for a possible refusal I could see anxiety in his eyes.  Finally I came out with it, "No problem, I will teach you, is tomorrow okay?"  Both parents smiled and nodded.  His face lit up.

"And in the steppe when every mind was still, you raised the skull of a beast that fed you."

So I survived the first two days of classes......barely.  The school opened with a lot of ceremony and fanfare.  All the children showed up in uniform and stood outside the school under flapping banners, and colorful ribbons.  Children sang songs and gave mini performances while a man with a keyboard (the dreaded Casio)  played pre recorded gameshowesque "Come on down!" type music whenever a new speaker got up to the podium.  Finally my director gave a lengthy speech in which I understood very little until the end when I heard a couple key words "...new English teacher, Justin!"  He then made a sweeping gesture with his arm pointing directly at me.  Teachers pushed me up to the podium from behind, and a microphone was thrust into my hands.  Oh, God they want me to give a speech.  So my directors fifteen minute talk was followed by my forty second Mongolian oration.  "Hello everyone, my name is Justin.  I am from New Jersey.  I am the new English teacher.  Happy new academic year!"


Classes immediately followed, I taught one, 5th grade.  Entering the room all the children stood up next to their desks, in their shiny new black and white uniforms and in perfect unison said "Hello, teacher!" culture shock indeed.  It went well, ABC's, numbers, singing, and being silly.  I looked forward to the next day to see what some of the other grades would be like.  I got more then I could ever ask for.  The next day was spent being tugged back and forth between my three counterparts.  All of them seemed to think I would be teaching with them for all of their classes.  I taught five classes straight and was pretty exhausted.  I swaggered into the teachers lounge and found one of my counterparts, Saruul sitting waiting for me to teach her next three classes with her.  She looked very under the weather, "Yasan be?" ("What's the problem?")  I asked.  She said she had a fever, would it be ok if she went home and I taught the next three alone.  So she went home, and I taught alone, 8th grade.  Being tugged around all day with no heads up or schedule I was not exactly prepared to take on a bunch of 8th graders alone.  They knew this and took full advantage.  After some classroom management, involving kicking the desk and moving kids around I got them to listen to most of the lesson.  This was the same for the next two classes.  Afterwards I was thoroughly exhausted, home, beer, bed.

So after my action packed first week of school I was ready to relax on my weekend off.  Saturday, I went to the delguur, grabbed my favorite beer, grabbed my music and headed off on another hike.  This time I headed in the opposite direction, out into the flat steppe.  I followed the road out of town, children ran alongside of me asking what I was doing.  They stopped and gave me perplexed looks wondering why I would want to walk out into nothingness.  As the haasha's and houses gave way the road became blocked by a herd of goats.  A man followed in their wake shooing them along with what appeared to be an old flintlock pistol.  I said hello and resisted the urge to ask him if I could look at the pistol.  I walked out into the flat expanse for a good hour through grass of varying heights and barren soil.  Finally I reached a cracked and vast stretch of land that I could only assume used to be a lake, now dry and desolate.  I stopped dropped my backpack and did a 360.  The town looked small and far away but it seemed as if I hadn't actually gone anywhere, I seemed no closer to the mountains on the other side of the valley, the only landmark I could decipher for miles.  While a dried up lake was interesting, I wanted a special spot to sit and enjoy my beer.  So I set back towards the way I came walking slightly off at a different angle going towards the town from a different side.  I walked and walked, listening to music about walking, about traveling, about going places that makes your head spin with their unique beauty.  Just like that my spot came to me.  It came in the form of a rusted hulk, a shell of some long forgotten automobile.  Stripped of everything but its metal skeleton, it sat in the middle of the steppe, its cab pointed towards Omnodelger, a destination it would never reach.  I was ecstatic. I climbed up on top of its roof and cracked my beer.  I watched the clouds whisp across the sky, the grass shudder in the breeze and goats grazing off to my side.  I sat on the car, my little embassy for mankind, enjoying my beer and music when a boy on horseback thundered by and did a double take when he saw me perched a top my sanctuary.  I laughed, finished my beer, hoped down, snapped a picture and started to head back into town.  Once again, content and relaxed, I knew that this was a place I would return to soon.

Things To Remember: pizza, Guiness, Stephen's State Park, projectile points, Sheridan's, the feel of an electric guitar, showers, my bed.

"Society, you're a crazy breed. Hope your not lonely, without me."

Rain drummed lightly on the roof of my ger.  Drops trickled between crevices in the glass to land with a steaming hiss atop my stove below.  These rainy days of solitude always got me thinking about my situation.  Adaptation in Orkhon was a lot easier when I had the camaraderie of my fellow trainees, now I was truly doing it alone.  No site mates for easy social interaction, or to share experiences and frustrations with, just me.

The next day was sunny and breezy, two weeks in Omnodelger and I hadn't seen much, save for the school and a few delguurs (shops).  As I arrived in Omnodelger in the dark I was eager to get a birds eye view of the lay of the land, I decided I'd go for a hike.  Almost every weekend in Orkhon me and my fellow trainees would pick a new outlying hill to hike.  We'd set out, drink some beers, listen to music, and take in the landscape.  Always seeming to find a view more beautiful then the last.  I picked one of Omnodelger's lesser and closer hills and set out.  It was weird hiking out alone.  No idle chatter, or joking, no one to comment on the thousands of jumping grasshoppers or obscure animal bones.  I listened to music and climbed, picking the largest ovoo at the crest of the hill as my destination.  When I reached the top I did the customary three lap walk around the ovoo adding rocks to the pile as I went.  Then I turned around and faced the town to take in the view.  To my back stretched the legendary Khentii mountain range.  Misty peaks with sporadic trees that once shadowed the childhood home of Ghengis Khann.  My location couldn't be more Mongolian.  At the base of this mountainous throne lies my sprawling soum of Omnodelger.  Beyond its chaotic grid of fenced hashaas and gers stretches the steppe.  In contrast to the steppe of Orkhon the steppe here is flat.  No rolling hills or gentle rises, just a pure flat expanse, void of elevation, stretching forever on to the distant outline of another far off mountain range.  Omnodelger literally translates as "Before the spread," this name while seemingly confusing at first, now made total sense.  If the steppe were an ocean, Omnodelger seemed an island, with the far flung mountains being the ends of the Earth.  My soum was the only vestige of mankind for as far as my eyes could strain to see.  I stood and took this all in.  Eagles circled overhead, the shadows of mammoth clouds crawled across the landscape, their outlines unbroken or tarnished by any obstacle.  With that I turned up my music and began trudging back down the hill towards my soum.  My home for the next two years.

"Make yourself at home we've been expecting you."

The dreams, they always start different but end the same.  I'm in some place "familiar", my house, a friends house, a popular Byram hangout, my grandma's house.  I'm surrounded by familiar faces, friends, family.  There is always some kind of revelry, a big dinner, a party, drinks and music.  In the dream someone always comes to me early on and wants to do something removed from everyone else.  Tom wants to go to the guitar store, my mom wants me to go sit on the porch with my grandmother.  The urgency and frequency with which they ask me progressively builds as the dream goes on.  Its not that I don't want to go with them, its just I'm caught up in the social atmosphere and everyone being together that it isn't until towards the end of the dream that when they ask a final time I happily comply.

This next part is the dream's greatest hit.  I go to leave with said person, we exit through a door, and things outside are entirely unfamiliar.  Instead of stepping out onto my front lawn, the BAGS parking lot, or my back porch I'm standing in the middle of the Mongolian landscape.  Miles of steppe, hills, and plains stretching on endlessly on all sides.  Nervously I take a step back, but the door in which I came through is gone, the whole house, the popular hangout is gone.  I'm alone standing in the center of the steppe.  I'm frozen in place, this overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness comes over me and I take another step back towards that place that isn't there.  That's when the music starts.  I look up towards an expansive blue sky, its source.  It echos with distorted sound as if it were being broadcast from underwater.  It fades and grows like it were being carried by wind that can't decide which direction to blow.  Its a song I've heard countless times by a band I never tire of listening to.  I recognize the song as AOD's "Arc of the Sun".  Suddenly I'm overcome with a new feeling, confidence, self purpose and direction.  I look out at the never ending grassland, the music grows and fades, grows and fades.  I take a step forward and wake up.

Today was quite an exhausting adventure.  I finally got to see the fabled countryside.  The place where my family does all of there alleged “gardening” outside of town.  I woke up bright and early prepared for the outing, the night before Jarga came into my room exclaiming “tomorrow we go to countryside, you go to see.”  I soon found out my family did a lot more then “gardening” and I would be doing a lot more then just “seeing”.  So off we went following the picturesque river outside of the soum.  The dirt roads dipped and dived going around crazy “S” turns and steep inclines, my older brother navigated using the roads it seemed only as a suggested path.  Every once and a while there would be a sickening clang from underneath the car and I would jump, the kind of clang that back at home you’d hear then immediately pull over to check to see if your vehicle was missing parts.  I was the only one phased by this and we continued onward, now I know why Mongolians are such resourceful mechanics. 

            After a long bumpy ride we arrived at “countryside” a ger nestled in between hills amid vast swathes of farm fields.  The rows and rows of vegetables extended for miles.  This is not what I thought of when I read the word gardening.  My older sisters served me tea and showed me around while my brothers went to work, fixing the pumps that brought water from the river to water the crops and repairing various agricultural equipment.  After my tea I wanted to help and get my hands dirty, I set off helping Jarra fix the teeth on one of the tractor plows.  In the 90 degree heat I decided to lose my shirt when I started working up a sweat.  After that I helped Mogi wash the car we arrived in, this ended with a lot of splashing laughing and fist shaking at Mogi.  When we finished Jarra gestured for me to hop in one of the Russian trucks, I jumped in and almost all of my extended family hoped in the back.  We drove a couple miles down a dirt road until we came to a far field where potatoes were apparently pretty far along in the growing process.  The rows of potatoes extended beyond where my eye could decipher them.  As I was led out into the field Jarra gestured for me to bend down, when I was almost eye level with the potato plant he snatched at a nearby weed and yanked it from the earth.  “Now you!”  he said.  Ok, I thought weeding is at least something I can’t screw up.  After about twenty minutes of weeding I was thirsty, getting sun burnt, covered in flies and apprehensively dodging large spiders that kept scurrying out from under the weeds I pulled.  I looked up at the never-ending row of potatoes and cursed them.  Potatoes were the most abundant things I’d eaten besides meat since arriving in Mongolia, not to mention I didn’t even really get particularly excited about them back in the US.  I stopped, stood up and looked around me and as usual I got the same reaction whenever I look around in Mongolia, I’m blown away by the landscape, the beauty of our planet, and the sheer scope of how small I really am.  I bent down and kept on weeding.  Six hours later I stumbled back to the truck dehydrated, sun burnt, bitten, tired, and achy.  After that potatoes started tasting better. 

I’ve begun to accept the fact that with my limited language knowledge, cultural know-how and unfamiliarity of the town, I am essentially a 24 year old toddler.  This has created some very interesting situations.  For starters a lot of things are too dangerous for me to be around or associated with horses, dogs, knives, certain plants, going too close to the river, motorcycles, scrap metal, apparently these could all put a swift end to the naïve volunteer.  I’ve kept my sense of humor and have even reveled in some of the humorous antic dotes my situation has produced.   One of my favorites is during meal time, my family will be joyously bantering away to one another in rapid speed Mongolian, I’ll be sitting quietly forking through my cycling variation of meat and vegetables and just to assert my position in the room I’ll usually just quietly say a random vocab word I know usually pertaining to my meal.  “Tomiss (potatoes)”.  The Mongolian banter will suddenly stop and I’ll be praised with “San ban!” (very good!).  Then the banter will quickly resume.  The Peace Corps has also issued the same pocket dictionary and phrasal book to my family that they gave to me.  So whenever there is a confusing interaction in my house they’ll quickly scurry around looking for either the dictionary or the phrase book, I like to think of it as the instruction manual I came with.

            Yesterday as I was in my room getting some language homework finished Jarra lightly knocked on my door.  He had someone with him, Jarra stepped in said hello then pushed forward a 15 year old boy in a soccer jersey and shorts.  “Hello, I am Mogi.”  Before I could even respond my host mom began calling for us to come outside to help herd the cattle.  As we all stumbled out of the house Jarra gestured that he wanted me and Mogi to go around the opposite side of the herd and get them moving towards the side of the hashaa (yard) with the gate.  So as I was walking in the direction he pointed Mogi materialized along side of me “Justin Brother, race!”  He finished this three-word request with a little mock start Olympic sprint.  I took off  after him racing up along the hill.  We weaved inside and out of cows and calves jumping over ditches and cow pies.  I don’t know if my side hurt from the sprint up the hill or from laughing so hard and we both reached the far side of the heard panting and laughing.  That’s how I met Mogi.

Classes are in full swing now, everyday language class 9-1 taught by our LCF’s (Language Culture Facilitator, everything apparently needs an acronym) than a 2-5 session on topics that rotate daily (ie Community Development, TEFL, and Cultural Adjustment) these are taught by current volunteers who rotate visiting and teaching at our site.   Cara and Tomay are excellent language teachers and have been so good about helping us get settled in, classes are getting more and more intense as the pace continues to pick up, no English aloud mostly because our teachers don’t really speak it, I’d call it advanced basic at best.

            Outside of class I’m trying to become accustomed to the everyday doings of my family.  I’ve learned that for one thing my family is a lot bigger then the Peace Corps let on.  In addition to three brothers (I still haven’t met the youngest or oldest) I also have three older sisters, all have children and husbands and they frequently stop in and spend the night.  I spend a lot of time playing ping pong and striving to understand Jarga as he strives to understand me.  Meal time has become an interesting affair, the food has been delicious, but each meal also doubles as a vocab lesson.  Every piece of food, utensil and furniture must be identified and repeated.  This is both helpful and nerve-racking.  My family is also very competitive all of them excel at ping pong, volleyball, basketball, and soccer.  Jarga is also fond of chess so we’ve found a game that we’re both good at and it has served as a good non-communicative way of getting to know each other.  Its also exciting because I can never find anyone who wants to play chess in the States.  

The following posts are events occurring between June 9th and July 18th.  Our soum is small, like really really small.  Internet is a laughable resource, but we are back in Darkhan so I will attempt to update the interwebs on the events that have transpired since I last had access to this blessed phenomenon of the 21st century.  Pay attention.

Yesterday I found out about the host family I'll be staying with and today I finally go to live with them for the next three months.  I'll be staying with a woman and her three sons, ages 15, 19, and 27.  According to the paper the Peace Corps gave me on the my host family my host mom is a clerk/gardener while her sons are students.  They have 2-3 "tied dogs."  I'll soon find out he paper left out many major details.  So we set off, me and my new smaller Peace Corps family to be dropped off with our host families.  My soum is small with a population of about 2,000 people and its an hour away from Darkhan.  I soon found out that destinations off the main road had no one way of reaching them.  Our driver turned off the pavement wherever he seemed fit and things got very bumpy.  My soum is beautiful.  A small town of wooden houses and hashaas (fenced in yards) it is nestled between rolling hills and alongside a river.  One by one we dropped off one another with their families, each time we would walk in and see each other off, say hello to the family and carry things to the new volunteers room.  I was the last to be dropped off, there would be no one familiar for me to say goodbye to.

My host mom and brother Jarra, 19 greeted me and carried my things inside.  They set my bags down in a simple room with nothing but a desk, a bed, and a zip up closet adorned with images of rainbows, woodland creatures, a whale, and apparently Ronald McDonald on a park bench.  Jarra turned to me and said "Welcome to our home."  They served me tea and Jarra attempted to communicate with the very little Mongolian I knew and the very little English he knew.  He took me outside and gestured towards a nearby hill.  We both climbed the steep hill and got a beautiful sprawling view of the town.  We attempted to make small talk but most conversations ended with "sorry" or "I don't understand".  As I stood up on the hill looking down at my new home with my new brother next to me whom I couldn't understand, my situation finally hit me and I suddenly felt very alone.  As if sensing my unnerved feeling Jarra gestured back down the hill.  When we arrived back inisde I attempted to start unpacking.  When Jarra saw the pictures I pulled from my bag he gestured towards them eagerly.  My host mom appeared and we all sat down while I showed them my life at home.  Jarra was particularly impressed by my pick up truck and photos of NASCAR, while my host mother asked a lot of questions about the pictures Mom gave me of the kitchen, house, and Christmas tree.  Jarra then showed me a school yearbook of his and then took me into a room with only a pinpong table and shows me a large stack of medals hanging on the wall.  Jarra and his whole family apparently excel at pingpong, volleyball, and chess and he enthusiastically let me know we'd be playing all three a lot.  I could only shoot nervous glances at the pingpong table.  Finally at around 9'o clock we sat down to eat dinner some kind of meat and noodle stew which was very filling.  Now tired and very full I began thumbing my pocket dictionary to exclaim that I was going to get ready for bed when suddenly Jarra stood up and gestured for me to put my jacket on.  "We go to cows now."  What do you mean we go to cows now, I thought.  That is not "some gardening".  So I put on my sweatshirt and we "went to cows".  As we went back into the evening the hill we had just climbed was now covered with about some 40 cows.  Jarra gestured, and we walked behind them clapping and yelling them driving them towards a big gate in back of our hashaa.  When the last cow finally crossed through the gate suddenly we both noticed a lone calf was still outside the gate.  Jarra and the calf seemed to notice each other at the same time, the calf froze and Jarra slowely crept towards it.  Suddenly the calf turned and sprinted, Jarra leapt through the air and tackled the calf and hauled it up under his arms.  He casually walked passed me and tossed the calf over the gate into the pen.  Thats how I met Jarra.

Darkhan June 6th 2011

We've arrived in Darkhan, we'll be training here until Thursday when we'll have to be moved once again to finally live with our host families for the next three months.  Darkhan is Mongolia's second largest cities with a population of around 100,000 people.  We are staying in a set of dorms adjacent to a Buddhist monastery and its pretty exciting to see the local monks move about.  We attended an awesome welcome ceremony with traditional Mongolian singing, dancing, and music.  We then were grouped into our small training villages where we'll be taken on Thursday, I found out my village will be one of the farthest south from Darkhan.  Unfortunately none of the people in this new small group (12) are individuals I've gotten friendly with.  I hope that changes soon as I'll be spending my next three months with them as my only English speaking American company.  After they grouped us we had our first language class.  I can tell already the language training is going to be intense.  Our two Mongolian teachers spoke no English through the entire lesson.  Through a series of gestures and repetition we were basically forced to memorize and learn what to say just to interact.  After that we went out to eat, I had my first Mongolian beer and it was actually pretty good not too dark and not too light, it will be a good Yuengling substitute, big relief! 

After dinner I was sitting on the stoop in the courtyard of our dorms when five Mongolian boys walked by, when they saw my guitar they all strolled over and began watching me play.  They excitedly began rambling off questions in Mongolian (remember this happened about an hour after my first language lesson).  With this limited knowledge I was only able to tell them, my name, that I worked for Peace Corps as a teacher and I was sorry my language was bad.  Now assuming I was a music teacher they began gesturing towards my guitar and what I can only assume was making song requests.  After several minutes of straining to understand one word they said one of them finally said a word I recognized and all the others began echoing it in unison, Beatles.  I quickly began playing the most popular Beatles tune I knew, suddenly their excited Mongolian banter gave way to a perfect English chorus as they sang along to Let It Be.  After I strummed the last chord they clapped, waved goodbye, and scurried off.  I sat dumbstruck with what had just occured and wished ther was a way I could have interacted with them more.  Thinking of the only solution I could I packed up my guitar and headed to my room to begin studying Mongolian.

Outside Ulaanbator-June 6th 2011

I guess I won the Peace Corps lottery, they decided to send me to one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.  Flying from Seoul to Ulaanbator I knew when we had finally crossed from China to Mongolia.  Civilization suddenly stopped, the clouds gave way to blue sky, and below an endless expanse of desert and steppe extended for miles.  Neil Armstrong's famous description as he took his first steps on the moon immediately came to mind, "beautiful desolation".  As we went north steppe gave way to rolling hills, grassland and sparse patches of trees.  When we arrived at the airport (the smallest I've ever seen, I counted 3 gates), we gathered our baggage we walked through a gauntlet of screaming, cheering, applauding volunteers that had come from all reaches of the country to greet us.  We were quickly taken away to immigration for pictures, fingerprints and paperwork.  After that we sped down bumpy dirt roads to a tourist "ger camp".  They unloaded 3 vaccines into my arm and thrust a large wad of Mongolia cash at me.  We spent the night just relaxing around camp hiking up some of the surrounding hills and taking in the gorgeous landscape.  Everyone is getting to know each other pretty well.  We sat in the grass while I played guitar and people sang along, this was all back dropped by a panorama of my first Mongolian sunset.  I've never been so content and humbled.