"You can take a trip to China or take a boat to Spain. Take a blue canoe around the world and never come back again..."

We sat around a small table.  Crowded with food, tea, wine and vodka we chatted after a hearty meal.  A fire crackled in the small stove that heated the one room house.  The house belonged to Enkhtor, one of our school's newest English teachers.  Her, myself, Kherlen, Saruul, and Bolormaa spent an evening meal and drinks together, as fellow English teachers, colleagues, and above all, friends.  Conversation had lapsed into a now new but reoccurring topic, my inevitable departure from Mongolia.  Trying to convince me I should stay another year they playfully argued with one another.  "He can move his ger into my hashaa."  Kherlen suggested "Its the biggest!"  Bolormaa cut her off before she could continue, "Justinaa!  Move into my yard, it's closer to the school!"  Trying to remain neutral I laugh and give them an impossible task, "The first person to build me a house, I'll move into their hashaa."  The room erupts in laughter and Kherlen jokingly smacks me on the shoulder.  When quiet seizes our group again, Saruul looks at me and asks in all seriousness, "What will you do when you leave Omnodelger?"    Before I could even ponder this Kherlen interjects on my behalf.  "He'll go to America, he'll get a job, he'll find a wife."  She counted each task on her fingers, like each action was already preordained.  "Will you go to another country after Mongolia?"  Bolormaa enquired.  Kherlen once again acting like my press secretary intervened.  "No, he'll buy a home and live in America."  She looked at me expectantly as if to say, isn't that so?  Her words sent a pang of emotion through my chest, that pang of emotion you get when someone just told you bad news.  I gathered my thoughts as quickly as I could.  Took a breath and opened my mouth to speak.

There is a book out there.  Its by Ken Jennings.  You know, the Jeopardy guy.  Its called Maphead.  I gave it a try out of curiosity and my inherent love for geography.  This short well written book happens to be all about people just like me.  A curious if sometimes nerdy group of individuals who happen to take a keen interest, a slight obsession, a refined passion for maps, geography, places.  People who memorize the shapes of states and countries.  Who list capitals and cities.  Can ramble on about interesting factoids about the lesser known places of our world.  People who go beyond just memorizing locations on a map but sit and create geography of their own.   From the imagination of a child to the mind of J.R.R Tolkien.  When I finished the volume I certainly considered myself to be thrown in with the lot the book described but something inside me told me I took it further.  While sitting and memorizing places on a map is good fun, I wanted more.  I wanted to go to these places.

"But traveling don't change a thing, it only makes it worse.  Unless the trip you take is to change your cruel course..."  

There's an English word adapted from German.  Wanderlust.  The strong desire or impulse to wander or travel and explore the world.  Before I had crossed oceans.  Before I had known what it was like to be in places like Berlin, Galilee, Bayeux, or Jerusalem.  Before I floated in the Dead Sea, crossed the Danube or waded in the Jordan I traveled stateside.  Working in archaeology had me visiting a different town almost everyday.  Small farm towns, quiet New England villages, landscapes of backwoods Americana.  I took pleasure in traveling, living, and working in these lesser known nooks.  Brandon, VT, Frenchtown, NJ, Clark's Summit, PA, Delmar, MD.  Every town, no matter how small was special if only briefly adding to my nomadic pleasure.  The Ramat Rahels, Orkhons, and Omnodelgers of the world only broadened my knowledge further.  A whole new level outside my comfort zone, I was traveling, I was subconsciously checking these places off in the map in my head but at the same time I was learning.  Absorbing culture, religion, and language, I didn't just want to understand these places I wanted to be a part of them.   What I didn't count on was them becoming a part of me.

"Cause every town's got a mirror, and every mirror still shows me..."

Now sitting across from my co-workers and friends that pang of emotion tore at my chest.  I don't want this to be it.  The atlas in my mind spread out to show the possibilities were endless.  "I think I'll want to see more of the world."  I said in a low voice.  "I've learned so many things from Mongolia and all of you, I think I'd like to learn from other places too."  Bolormaa pondered this, "Where?  Africa?"  I couldn't help but smile at this knowing the reaction my answer would instigate.  "Wherever.   I would like to go to places in Africa."  Kherlen let out a little gasp, "Oui, Yanaa, who will you go with?"  I shrugged my shoulders in indifference, "I don't know, maybe I will go alone."  Another gasp.  "You can't go to those places alone, it's too dangerous."  I spread my arms out before myself, the gesture made words unnecessary.  Here I sat, the lone American in Omnodelger, as I have been for more than a year.  "Sometimes you learn more when you are alone."  I added.  They all seemed to nod in understanding.  "If I meet people in other places as kind as you have been to me I know I will be okay." I added for reassurance.  Bolormaa made a clucking sound with her tongue and said with a smile, "Other countries will be lucky to meet you."  Truth or not this made me smile right back.    

1. "I am my own ragged company."

     

"Been on the road 'till tomorrow. Been through the joys and the sorrow. Came through the flood and I pulled through the mud, but I still got a long way to go."

I have lived, dwelt, worked, and breathed Mongolia now for one year four months and eight days.  From the inspiringly uplifting to the teeth grindingly frustrating.  I've spent the majority of that time doing things I never imagined myself doing.  Living in ways I never imagined myself living and forging relationships with people I never imagined meeting.  I'm in my second year so when a member of the Peace Corps staff dropped by for a site visit he exclaimed that visiting second year volunteers was a lot easier.  We seem less stressed, more settled in, more savvy.  I'd like to think that true for the most part, fires start a little quicker, conversations are a little less confusing, goat innards are a little more tasty (not much), car rides are a little less frustrating.  For all Mongolia has given me it still tests me everyday.  Its one of the aspects of living here that makes it all so rewarding.

October in New Jersey was always mild.  Sporadic windy days that sent the golds, oranges, and browns swirling about.  As a kid I remember jumping in the leafy piles and flailing about spastically trying to pluck the colors from the air.  In Vermont it was even more spectacular, colors that painted landscapes and mountainsides.  I remember working on the ferry gazing out the window as we chugged across Lake Champlain, streaks of red and gold dripping down the Adirondacks.  I remember thumbing through a book about Aztec history as the tourists from down south, the "Leaf Peepers" fired off photographs.

Omnodelger doesn't have trees.  Well we do but there is like four, and they were planted, and all the same color.  So it isn't exactly the color show of rural Vermont.  October usually brings on the first of various snowfalls that would mark winters coming.  I awoke this morning, throat scatchy, body aching.  One of many imminent winter colds, my own personal mark that winter was coming.  I also awoke to a peculiar sound.  Like the tiniest most minuscule of pebbles being softly dropped on glass.  Frequent gusts rocked my ger and my stove pipe clanged.  I got up and dressed, warmer than usual.  I knew what the sound meant.  Mongolia couldn't pull a fast one on me this morning.  I exited through my ger door, then through the door of my wooden shed I use for storing wood in winter.  Outside the wind blew, snow fell in a swirling fury with each gust.  The wooden planks of our hashaa's fence swayed, snow caked in its weathered cracks.  I sighed into the snowy abyss.  Not yet!  I'm not ready!   It was warm and sunny only days ago.  Winter had come and snatched Omnodelger in its grip, I knew it would be a great long while before it let go.

I taught my classes.  Attendance was pitiful.  The further dwelling students not wanting to brave the trek.  Still feeling under the weather I immediately went home after teaching.  The blustery blizzard still raged on.  I made a fire.  I took a nap.  I awoke in the early evening.  Pulled on some boots and a jacket prepared to make my cross hashaa journey to the outhouse.  I exited my ger into my tiny supply shed.  Into almost a foot of snow.  The winds persistence had sent the tiny flakes blowing through every crack and crevice in the wood.  My wood was snowy and frosty, my ger door entombed in a white blanket.  I sighed and kicked through the powder to the sheds door.  Unlatched it.  Pushed.  Resistance.  I tried again.  The door opened a crack then stopped.  The wind had formed a snow bank outside my door, higher and deeper than my waist.  I was trapped in my own home.  Snowed in.  I stuck my head through the crack and saw movement in the yard.  Dawkraa was trudging to the family car in an old worn grey deel.  "Dawkraa, help!" I yelled sticking an arm through the crack to wave him over.  He trudged towards me chuckling at my predicament.  He started kicking at the snowy bank with his boots.  "Go get a shovel!"  I demanded.  He kept on kicking, "There is no shovel."  I laughed and rolled my eyes, "of course."  Finally freeing me from my house, he pried the door open and upon seeing the snow accumulation in my supply shed made a disapproving groan and went about kicking the snow from my wood back outside.  We both flailed about kicking snow and ice until the shed was as snow free as two men can make it using only their boots.  As Dawkraa turned back towards his own home he asked, "Are you okay?  Is your ger warm."  I thanked him and told him I'm fine.  "Good, come to my home tomorrow."  he added, "We'll eat marmot!"  I laughed as he walked back towards his house, of course we will.  Closing the door against the biting wind and snow,  I shook my head at the damp wood and icy door.  Man, I still got a long way to go. 

Now late in the evening the clock ticks towards midnight.
One year.
Four months.
Nine days.

I wouldn't give a single one back.