"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.