"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.