"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.