Dadal Vacation blog....AND GER MOVE!!!! Videos and pictures of Dadal and Naadam are the two previous posts. Ger pictures will follow this week...

Blog Entry July 4-15th 2010. Bagkhangai. Mongolia. (You read the location correctly)
Today’s Quote: “It’s only hubris if I fail.” – Gaius Julius Caesar


Rather than backtrack and try and put down a bunch of reactive entries into this blog about my vacation out to Dadal I decided instead to just write it all out in one single entry. Here we go.


Fourth of July started off with a BBQ. The day before I had lucked into a few conversations with some of the fellow M20’s still in town and they informed me that a BBQ party was being thrown somewhere in town. Naturally we all were interested.
Finding the place…now that took finesse. Me and about four or five others (some not even PCV’s but all Americans) got into a taxi and drove to the direct south of the city. If UB had a suburb area it would be this place. Up on the hill, overlooking the city, new buildings, kinda out of the way of all the traffic approaching the city from the north, west and east, yea it’s a suburbia. It also means that this is where private and international schools set up shop. The party was at one such school. Everyone knew kinda where it was but noone knew exactly where…good recipe for walking around. After thinking one building may be it we got out of the taxi, and literally walked in a 5 or so kilometer circle of a huge complex that turned out not to be the place. Fun fun.
We get back in the taxi and tell the driver the same thing we said to the last guy who had only stared at us blankly and in less than two minutes we pulled up to a huge crowd all of which were westerners. BBQ baby!
It turns out that this was the real deal. Hot dogs, hamburgers, real buns, cokes, sprite, a potato sack race and other contest and even the United States Marine Corps brought there marching band instruments as well as some rock and roll equipment. Back when I was a kid I used to attend the fourth of July festivities of the town of Vienna, Virginia. I remember everyone gathering at the playground of Vienna Elementary School and just eating drinking and being merry. I think as a kid all I truly craved was the fireworks but I will say the more you age the more you appreciate your youth. Its funny, I always thought I was going to be angry about how much I didn’t appreciate it but it turns out I just get to enjoy it in some ways now instead. Cool.
Cooler still was who threw this little shindig together. The good people at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were all out in there traditional white shirt, black slacks and nametag looks (in the winter they wear these baddass black cloaks with a white nametag instead. I actually own a similar looking cloak back in the states, and I miss wearing it on random occasions and throwing everyone off) and they all seemed as usual quite chipper and happy. Say what you will about LDS and their beliefs, they threw one really good barbeque. I even got to ask one of the big questions I had had for a while then. While standing in line for food a mid-50 LDS man stood behind me and while waiting in the long line I finally got to ask “when you talk to people from small towns and from the countryside who offer you tea, how do you refuse without being impolite?” He told me such a simple answer it should have come to me before. “We simply say that our faith does not let us drink tea and instead we ask them for some milk.” That’s just brilliant. Your still asking for something to drink that the person makes or bought and therefore still respectable. Dang that’s smart! I even got to meet a handful of Mongolian LDS members dressed up in the white shirt black pants attire as well. That was a first.
There was even beer, which I am sure LDS kindly turned a blind eye to so that we could enjoy a cold one with the great food. Me and the fellow volunteers sat back and relaxed and ate and drank until we were so merry that we all headed back to town by either meeker or walking and felt the wonderful feel of an American culture item taking place even in a land so far far away.
The next day, I made preperations for Dadal…
I knew Dadal had meekers leaving for it, but I didn’t know when or where. I started by going to the Eastern Bus Station. It services the towns out East as well as the treks out into the Gobi. Made sense that’s where the bus would leave from. I found the bus to reach the bus station. It’s come to that. I am so sick of arguing with cab drivers that I have actually worked out the bus schedule to a town I go to less than once a month.
So I get there and ask the booth in my very refined Mongolian when and where is the next bus to Dadal. “You???” (Mongolian for what) says the lady behind the counter. I repeat myself. Another question about what. I try patiently again, getting a weird flashback to that time back in NYC when I needed to get a form signed for medical clearance and noone seemed to let me through the red tape. This time she says “Choir???” (how the hell does Dadal sound like Choir?) and for a fourth time I say Dadal and proceede to make an imaginary map of Mongolia in front of me and to point in the Northeastern portion of the country where I wanted to go and just kept saying “Dadal…DAdal…Duadal…DaHDal…” and on and on and on, literally going on like this for a good fifteen minutes.
This is a real buzz kill whenever I convince myself that my Mongolian is actually conversational. I know I am not the most talented linguist of my class, hell maybe im not even in the top 50%. I don’t pride myself on my ability to learn other languages, hell I even consider it one of my greatest weaknesses and barriers to getting along with so many I encounter and meet, but dammit ive spent a good year REALLY REALLY trying…even I should be able to ask something as simple as a ticket to the town of Dadal without all this!
Finally she asks me for twenty two thousand tugriks, an encouraging sign as that’s how much it said it would cost to get there in my Mongolia book and so I pass her the money and she proceedes to give me a ticket. Luckily I had stopped to read the ticket and saw that she had sent me to Dalanzaghad!!!! (The southern gobi capital! Its 110 degrees down there today!) Finally I tell her wrong and just write the town name down. She reads the piece of paper and I swear to Zeus and all the gods its true when she replied to me by saying “AHHHHH….dadal.” She said in the exact same tone and accent the exact town I had been uttering for the last ten minutes. No difference of any kind whatsoever and she couldn’t understand me. Infuriating….
Luckily I at least found out that the meeker would leave for Dadal tomorrow at Naarantuul Market. So I at least knew where the thing would take off.
….but I sure as hell didn’t know when. I packed up my small backpack (too small) and got my tent assembled and at high noon proceeded to go to the black market. I walked up and down the rows and finally found a bored driver sitting in a meeker with a tiny scribbled “Dadal” sign on it. I said to the driver “you going to Dadal?” He replied in eight or so hours. A smart move would be to retreat back to Nayras café by bus, order another pizza, splurge on a beer and simply comfortably wait this whole thing out.
I’m really not that smart. No I sat in that empty meeker for six hours without a single changing event. Noone came to the empty meeker but me and without books I just sorta sat there. Occasionally walking literally around the meeker but otherwise spending my time just sitting inside the damn meeker wishing it was not so hot outside.
Then, sure as the tide or the rising of the sun, at about 7:50pm, after seven hours of waiting in an empty meeker an army of Mongolians carrying over two tons worth of equipment swarmed down on the meeker. What followed next was an hour of everyone jockeying for both position and for the ability to somehow bend the laws of physics by getting all this equipment into a space that literally is smaller than it. I have lived in this country for over a year. I have seen and done a great many things. I have found that if I wait long enough and pay close enough attention I can begin to understand why things that otherwise do not make sense finally do. However, I do say without fear of contradiction that I have NO idea how they get all the stuff that they do when they pack a meeker. Though I will say that even bored and at that point as uncomfortable as I was I did get a great memory flashback of me and the Jacob’s all driving down to the beach in the minivan. How we used to stuff it with every toy and thing imagineable and how somehow, despite a seat for everyone that THAT seemed like a full car. We don’t change, we just gain more relativity. Remember that!
Well once the laws of physics were literally bent far enough that everyone and everything was inside the car we proceeded to load out. The van only had six seats in the back, and when we left the market it had eight. Definitely a tight fit, but very doable. So we pull out of the black market ninish (by now darkish) and drive three blocks east and….stop to pick up two more adults and two kids. Literally nowhere to put them, but in they must go. The kids sat down on the floor among our feet, but the adults were a frail old lady and man and so somehow, I haven’t a clue how but somehow we found ourselves all in the space built for six people. Now I was uncomfortable….at the start of whats supposed to be at least a 12 hour trip!
Off we go!
Now the problem with driving at night is that you cant see anything out the window. Unlike in most of America much of Mongolia is not inhabited and so on and on and on there just blackness at night. Everyone is uncomfortable and awake still and for five hours I was just repetitively asked “Daar uu???” (are you cold?) I kept saying no and in a meeker of 12 bodies of six seats I sure was warm enough. My leg was also uncomfortably shoved up against the side of the meeker. Nothing about what we did was comfortable, but I also sat on the seat of the meeker by only one ass cheek, requiring me to shuffle every twenty minutes to keep from going insane with discomfort. In the beginning this wasent so bad, but at 2am rolled around one by one the people in the meeker somehow fell asleep. Every time I shuffled they would all awaken, and so I simply sat there, impossibly wedged with my legs screaming silently into the palm of my hand in pain and discomfort as we drove on in the pitch dark.
At three in the morning we stopped to eat at a sorta diner. They stay open for yutzes like us who are traveling to far off places. I hadn’t eaten in over 18 hours, but I really wasent that hungry. It did mean at least that I got out of the meeker for an hour though. I sat and ate Tsuivan and spread my legs as far and wide as they possibly could. That was something to feel after so long. Though a marathon runner I have never had much flexibility above the waist. We were still on the actual paved road between Ondorkhan and UB and I was already in pain. Note to self: Bring Motrin IB next time! Or get drunk to the point of passing out before getting into the car!
We drove on, I think I got about seven minutes of sleep once we loaded back in. The sun came up and I saw were were now off the paved road, and had not even taken the dirt/rock road common past that point. We were on the grass, and only two tire marks led the way. At dawn the rains came, making an already perilous journey treacherous.
You ever notice how rain has almost no bearing on our driving in America? Sure maybe we give ourselves another ten minutes to get somewhere and all that and maybe it’s a tad harder to see outside but by in large with paved roads and brightly lit areas rain is little more than water off a duck to Americans. Without the amazing development which is pavement all roads turn to mush. This is how the Roman Empire grew so mobile and strong for its time….roads.
Well two thousand years later and Mongolia still has yet to get a whole lot of pavement. The journey came to a crawl. The meeker/minivan so designed for bulk transport from one paved city to another and with a weight in it that would have crushed Midas himself was banging along mud and grass heading to some remote and distant town. After twelve hours we came upon a town. It was not Dadal but the town of Bayan-Ovoo. Not even close! Ready for the kicker? The town was butt ugly. Maybe it was the cloudy sky or the more than usually run down Russian buildings but I felt like I was in a ghost town that noone had bothered to leave.
Everyone got out and for the first time I was able to lie down and actually sleep for more than seven minutes. No one seemed to leave the meeker at this point, but I realized that this was only the beginning. Half an hour later we all piled back in and for some reason some of the passengers had bought even more stuff that was crammed inside. My leg was smashed so hard against the side of the minivan I feared for its circulation. Nothing for it…time to go.
And so we trudged on once again. This time not heading north on the gravel/dirt road that exists to the northeast, but instead cutting our own path to the northwest. By midday we reached the town called Bayan-Adraga. It’s a town just before a river that has no bridge. The water is about four feet deep where we crossed it. The minivan stood no chance alone, and so tractors were contracted to pull us through. We were drive straight into the water, water so deep that the water came to one inch from the windows and the side doorway started to flood with river water. I am sure this happened a number of times, but I could just see the tractor breaking down or the cable snapping and all of us slowly drowning among one another in such a place. Not a pleasant thought.
Luckily we made it across the river safe but the next two hours were far more awkward. The rain from earlier that day had made the driving path a swarm of mud pits, all of which we needed to drive through. Some we made it through…some we did not. Ah, the mud push…good times. Lots of great pictures and its exactly like it sounds. Its me and a bunch of other exhausted Mongolian men pushing a minivan in the mud while the women look on at us as if were doing manly things. A tractor had to help us out one time when the meeker got particularly stuck. The track remained muddy for a while but eventually we passed the towns of Binder and Batshireet off in the distance. Though the road at this point was nonexistent and we were literally just driving through the grass I will say that I was rather impressed with the scenery of the place. Though in some ways much like where I lived the number of lakes and trees gave much more ambiance to the area. I could see how such a place would make people appreciative of nature. But by this point I had been traveling for over 18 hours (over 24 if you count the time waiting at Naarantuul) The final six hours of the journey were overkill. Tempers were starting to run high in the meeker too as conversations started to run into towns and families reputations. I luckily played the fool and said nothing. I had also abandoned my seat and had put my backpack in my lap and took up seating on the thin space between the drivers seat and the back seats. Still, watching one hill lead to another, the endless nothing in every direction and the feeling as though you have been at this for all time can be a daunting feeling. Evening was coming and I just wanted it all to come to an end. It wasent.
There were these moments where the driver began to lose his patience and was driving VERY VERY aggressively too. We would drive off the mud section and into the grass portions. The vehicle was moving fast and there were these very scary periods of mud skiing taking place where the tires would get clobbered in mud and we would find a turn in the “road” and glide onto the grass where the mudded tires had no traction and we found ourselves fishtailing in an impressively top heavy car out in the middle of nowhere. Each and every time we blissfully did not hit anything or simply flip over as I was so certain we would. Yea that was a scary bit.
Then…as the number of trees grew and after all hope had been lost of reaching the town by nightfall one final massive hill was scaled by the beaten up minivan and with a final lurch we crossed back onto a gravel/dirt road….DADAL…was finally found.
35 hours. That’s how long it took us to go about 350 kilometers, as the eagle flies anyway. Heres a good way of thinking about it. Imagine driving from Northern Virginia to the beaches on the border of North and South Carolina. Okay. Got the image of the road in your head (dad I know you got that hardwired by now) Okay so start driving out of Vienna, Virginia. Take the highway out of town, head south on 95 and enjoy a lightly traveled road. Doing good? Okay, now pass the town of Fredricksburg…and that’s where the road ends. No dirt or gravel…ENDS! Imagine trying to drive the rest of the way without a road. That’s what this was like….oh I almost forgot, take the contents of your house and stuff them ALL into your car along with you.
…I made it to Dadal….and I had no idea where to stay.
Technically I had a tent and all I had to do was walk to one of the random woods surrounding the town and pitch tent for the night, but Naadam was tomorrow and I wanted a guesthouse so I could put my stuff down during the day and enjoy myself, but I found myself without such an option if I camped. I wanted to find pretty much the only open guesthouse in the town, but the place had no phone number, and I had no map of the town or even an idea of where the place was. All I had was a name and a job. His name was Dorjsuren, and he was a retired mathematics teacher. I started to ask around town about the guy and all I ever got was random people pointing in some direction and saying “teend” (there) NOT helpful!
I was tired, hungry, unshaven, my leg hurt and most of all it was 8:30pm and getting dark outside. I had all but resigned myself to the countryside. I was walking out of the town cranky and miserable. It was a terrible start to what had already been a most trying couple of days…and then there was a woman.
What is it about women? How can a single woman have so much influence on a single persons future by doing nothing other than simply being there? Is it their whimsical ways? Their ability to bring us to reason and sense when we would otherwise not have it? Their talent in driving us insane and making us crazy when we are otherwise sated? Is it how they encourage bad habit in us when we are turning over new leaves, or how they guilt us away from our vices when we indulge? Is it the way they smile at us and all out Ego goes out the window? Is it how amazed we are that such fire and ire can come from so small a package? Are we bewildered by the way in which women do things in their bodies like traveling alone to Dadal that my physically more powerful body was barely able to survie? Is it that in every woman we meet we can find something to gawk at and be drawn to? Or is it that I just found a beautiful being before me who saved my entire first vacation from being a complete and total mopefest… I cant say. Probably more of that last one more than anything though.
All I can say is that I met a girl that evening on my way out of town. A local hashaa guy had pointed at a building when I had said Dorjurens name and had also blathered the word for inside during his rant. I walked over to the old abandoned factory to find that it was in fact a renovated culture center and a series of musical and dance performances were going on as we spoke. I walked along the entrance doors believe the guesthouse owner was somewhere inside and that’s when I saw this pretty young woman. She was smoking a cigarette and seemed so out of place. It took me a second but I caught on pretty quick and realized that while Asian she was most certainly not a Monoglian. She stood like someone impatient about something and when I went over and asked in Mongolian if she spoke English she replied “teem” (yes) and I realized she knew as much Mongolian as I did. I asked if she knew a man named Dorjsuren and at that moment the clouds in the sky parted and a beam of light shone down on her as she replied with a willowy reed of a voice.
“…yes, I am staying at his guesthouse.”
::queue music fanfare::
:::Rose petals rained down around us.:::
The Sky Father and Earth Mother had blessed me with a goddess…after having a little fun of having me run all over town for the past hour but still…a goddess in the end!
Dorjsuren was inside watching the festivities and so I spent the next hour chatting up the pretty young savior of mine. Her name was Esther (she has a Chinese name as well but she would only tell me it once…her names Esther dammit!). She’s a 26 year old traveling worker from Hong Kong. She spoke Cantonese, Mandarin, English and she had been living and working/volunteering in Hong Kong for over four months and spoke about as much Mongolian as I did. She too…had chosen Dadal as some random location of Mongolia she had not yet had the pleasure of visiting and thought it would be a great place to see a small town Naadam take place.
Great minds ladies and gentlemen…we do tend to think alike.
Eventually as night fell Dorjsuren finally emerged and with Esthers permission I was welcomed to the guesthouse as well. We were driven pretty far to the corner of the town (about five kilometers away) and there was the cabin. There are very few gers found in the northeastern section of the country. I can see the reasons why. Lots of trees for wood, cold in the summer inside a log house, hot in the winter, more space and since they don’t have to be as mobile as they did in the nomadic days of old the houses are quite nice. Inside the guesthouse cabin was four beds and only me and Esther were each others company. The bed was a spring mattress setup and though a little too flexible for my taste I was so sleep deprived at this point that many times what I heard Mongolians say would come off as English to my brain. Pretty cool actually when you think about it. But after brushing the fur off my teeth I fell into a coma at 9pm that night.
I awoke feeling like I had been dripped in the fountain of youth. My whole body felt energized and alive. A quick shave and some water in my hair gave me a clean feel as well. I am not a Buddhist, nor do I align myself to any particular faith of this world. Heck I even find philosophies in Star Wars literature by authors like Matthew Stover to have some merit and use in them so I am the last to advocate people to believe in any doctrines or thoughts on how to live out our lives. What brings one of us joy would be seen as insane to another and what makes that person happy would be the hell incarnate (me and my sister are an excellent example of this)
I do however feel that the difference of those two days demonstrates a key argument of the beliefs of the Buddha. That there is suffering, and that said suffering is in every form of life and living that exists. In essence I agree that everything is a form of suffering. For example, when I was in the meeker those past two days with my leg crammed horribly against the side to the point that when I woke up that morning I had a bruise running up my entire calf, this was a form of suffering called pain. I was in a position that if I continued to allow myself to remain in such a position it would continue to be perceived as pain by my mind. I could temporarily end that suffering by shuffling my position, but then if I waited another hour that position too would become painful and I would have to move again to avoid pain.
Pain…
Pain is not so much suffering as it is in it of itself a God in some ways. It is the instructor and master of every sentient being on this planet. From Presidents to single cell organisms. A worm knows that if it hurts to go one direction it will go in the other. It’s the fuel in the engine of change of this world. If Joan of Arc had not felt the pain of war, she would have lived out her days as a carefree child and England may yet still be ruling France or if the Holocaust had not taken place Jewish sympathy and motivation would never have reached levels high enough to create a Jewish state and if the Jewish state had not been created then Yasser Arafat would have lived out his life as a comfortable landlord and on and on and on in a never ending cycle of pain and change. We hurt and hurt and hurt until…finally…someone does something about it.
More than that though is you realize pleasure to be suffering as well. When we feel dirty we shower, and then we don’t feel dirty anymore, but soon we will feel dirty again. If you go from showering once a month to showering once a day those showers once a day will not feel as satisfying to you than if you hadn’t showered for a day. Pleasure has no baseline that you can perpetually maintain. We eat because we are hungry, but once again we will feel hungry. I miss wine, and when I finally get to drink a good sip of the stuff the first taste will be like ambrosia. Yet when I return to America and drink wine with dinner each night it will lose that first time experience of bliss and will require more to satisfy me. In essence comfort and luxury are suffering for a simple reason. They do not last.
Buddha used this and found that the only way not to feel the suffering was not to react to anything differently than anything else. To an enlightened person. The sitting in that car should bring no other feeling of comfort than sleeping in that nice springy bed or drinking a cup of wine. I have obviously not reached that level…but the understanding of how or what is required of you to find your center is a good first step.
Well that’s a conversation I had with Esther that first night and it seemed like a good place to put it in this entry. But for that day though we had something bigger and grander to look at … and that was NAADAM BABY!!!!!
Me and Esther got there in time for the opening ceremony. It was a tad more regal than the ceremony I went to in Erdene last summer. This one included men on horseback taking the yak haired banners to the center of the naadam ring where soldiers took control of the banners and had them planet next to the flag both of Monoglia and of the region (which has an uncanny resemblance to the flag of Germany…which gave me a great laugh) Actually most peoples summer dells from the area have the same three colored insignias as well. Its is supposed to represent something regarding if the people of the town have been bestowed an honor of some kind. I didn’t get an accurate enough answer out of those who responded. After that the games sort of took off. The first day of wrestling was kind of childish though. The people wrestling ranged from sumo to kids not even ten years old. Unlike last year I decided to sit this year out. I didn’t know this town, and so my involvement may have been less warmly received. Also, had I got hurt here in some ways (some wrestlers this year in fact did!) that would have been a pain in the ass to explain to Peace Corps that I needed them to pick me up from some far off and distant soum because I decided I wanted to wrestle. The horse races were rather competitive though and I really like them.
Esther was a huge fan of horses and often when I was watching the wrestling match at the top of the stands she was looking the opposite direction to the outside where all the horses were racing around. To each their own.
That night the two of us got drunk on cheap beer. It was just the two of us and Esther once again broke every Asian steryotype I was ever told. Shes half my weight and drank as much as I did. She swore, quite well in fact too. She smoked quite a bit and most amusing of all…she had never heard of how you can use the big dipper to find the North Star. We spent the night sitting on the step of the guesthouse drunkenly pointing at stars and making ones up. I will admit it got a little lewd near the end as we pretty much just stared making up body parts of Greek and Roman gods in the sky. I asked her if the Chinese had any constellations and she proceeded to rant at me about how much she disliked mainland China and wanted to know why the USA let mainland China push them around so much.
That was the first time id ever heard someone with that point of view from Asia so it took a moment to adjust. I explained to her that places like Hong Kong and Taiwan are very close to the mainland and therefore easier for them to influence. I explained to her that outside of Chinas immediate space Chinas power quickly diminishes and therefore while centrally a force to be reckoned with internationally China is not as strong as others make it out to be.
This answer pleased her and coupled with both the booze and the promise that with working English, Mandarin and Cantonese she could easily find a home in America we resigned ourselves to talking about the World Cup instead.
The second day of Naadam was much like the second, but our guesthouse was joined by two other nice ladies from Italy. They were both in their 30’s and working their way through the world, as do many who wind up between China and Russia. They seemed nice enough and we all found the next day a driver willing to take us back to UB. That evening I explained that on the road home was the town of Erdene, my home last summer.
So what was going to be me all alone ended up being all of us pledging to camp in my family’s yard the following day. The bus back to Erdene the next day was late. We would have complained but after waiting at the Naarantuul Market sitting on the step of a log cabin you’ve been sleeping in with three beautiful women with the Siberian woods in plain sight believe me when I say that I endured.
The trip back was a godsend compared to the last one. No three towns to visit this time around. No we headed Northeast out of town for about two or three hours (the sunny three days before had dried up the mud and made that transport a whole lot easier) and then we turned onto a gravel/rock road of sorts. The scenery was the steppes. The long endless feel that in every direction eternity lurked. People lost out at sea often talk about how daunting the world appears when you can see nothing. It works the same on land too…its just a lot harder to find a place like that. I will say this though, it is a beautiful world. Ive already seen enough of Mongolia to know how gorgeous this place is, but each of Mongolias rolling hills needs to be seen for its own uniqueness in it.
On and on the hills rolled by and the further we drove the more solid the road became. We made excellent time, and the bus was not like last time stuffed to the rafters. There were only seven of us traveling in a space built for six. We could have done that standing on our heads. We reached Ondorkhan by 5pm, which meant we now had a paved road all the way back to Erdene. The Monolian passengers of the vehicle started to buy alcohol at this point and the journey got a little less pleasant. The ladies didn’t drink so they wanted me to do so and while I don’t mind drinking I just on that day really wasent in the mood for vodka. I hate vodka…
Hours rolled by, and though I had hoped to be at my moms house by sundown our driver at 9pm got a little peckish and stopped at a roadside restaurant for a two hour dinner. This meant that as we rolled up to Erdene it was practically midnight. As I stated, theres no real outside light at night in this country. I knew my moms house would be one of the first houses we came across, and so I found myself exhausted and hungry trying to use my flashlight to spot the house. Luckily the green roof was hard to forget and I flagged the driver down exactly where we needed to stop.
It was too late to get food (though we had all not eaten at the restaurant in hopes of getting some) and my mom was asleep. But my sister did let us all sleep on the floor of the main room, and so as it were two Italian girls, a Hong Kong volunteer woman and a Peace Corps volunteer found themselves snoring in the TV room of the Peace Corps volunteers families home…you know some moments in life just cant be captured well by camera.
We woke up famished and conversational. My mother was looking very sturdy and well as usual…but my sister. Geeze!!!! My sisters looks change a lot. Last time I had seen her in January she had sheared her hair to swim team length. Now the hair had grown back but as she was immediately heading to the city she had decided to dress up in the most ridiculous outfit. It looked like something women from a Cosmo magazine would have worn in the 1960’s or something.
As usual I said nothing aside from the fact that she looked well.
We went on a quick hike up the big hill in the town so the ladies could get a good view of the place. They enjoyed the hike and I just liked the company and the chance to see the town again. However, we were pressed for time and we all wanted to get over to UB to run some errands.
We got lucky and got a couple eager and cheap drivers to drop us right off at the guesthouse we had luckily gotten space in. At this point we all separated and ran our errands for the day. For me the big one was going to Peace Corps office and finally getting the Ger power cord that they had been unwilling to ship and that was needed before I could move into a ger. The box was heavy as hell, and tourism life from the past week had made me weak, but I got it back to the guesthouse. I took a shower and put on a new shirt for the first time in over a week. Everyone who knows me can vouch I have a VERY weak sense of smell. It was a pain in the ass when I was an RD and couldn’t tell if people had been smoking pot. Yet when I got out of that old shirt, showered and put on new clothes I held the old shirt up to my nose and took a whiff…
KNOCKED ME DOWN!
I am not saying this for dramatic effect, I literally stumbled back and fell onto my bed. That was rank! I wonder if the ladies just hadn’t said anything or they had smelled as lovely as me having been traveling for a week. What the hell am I going to smell like when I go to Hovsgul Nuur for three weeks? A sink washing turned up grey water for five or so minutes and then I hung it out to dry. Wolf!
So the next day the Italians and I parted ways, and I can only hope to get facebooked by them at some point. Esther however, was coming with me. Not wanting to be in UB for Naadam and since we were still getting along pretty damn well she decided to see what my town looked like. We got out of the city with no time to spare as it was the start of Naadam. My soum looked so quiet after all the hubbub from the last week. Esther was bummed I hadn’t moved into a ger yet but as she has lived in a ger for over a month back in May it wasent like she was missing out.
There wasent much to show her around town. We walked along the Air Force Base and I introduced her to a handful of the Peace Corps Volunteers who we bumped into. Mostly we just hung out. I have no idea why I got along so well with her. We just clicked, and I was truly grateful for the company. I started to realize that my personality is not one that rapidly enounters people. I don’t make best friends with those I see the most by default like many others I know do. No, it takes a particular set of circumstances for me to really meet someone I like, especially now and where ive been. Its lonely, and I don’t really mind that but I do think that every once and a while you need to connect to someone like that. It reminds you of how your supposed to feel. Alas, work called her, and by the following day she had to head out. We plan to meet again in June, and I certainly want to see her again.
After I saw her off in a meeker I called up my boss Baasansuren. Enough was enough, it was time to move. I told her in my broken Mongolian that I had her power switch thingy, and ten minutes later after she had picked me up in her car and they took a power indicator from my apartment we drove to Bagkhangai.
…the ger….
It was shiny and new and dead smack in the middle of a smallish yard. The ger itself is also rather small. It’s a four wall ger, fairly common but in terms of height its also rather short. About four and a half feet tall at the widest part and I can only stand upright near the center of the ger. This doesn’t bother me at all. First off it makes me feel sort of like a giant, but also in the winter this smaller space will be MUCH easier to heat. The ger was bareboned and empty, but as I opened the box and handed her the power equipment she told me to pack my bags as tomorrow morning I was moving.
Its strange…I had thought forward to this for a while. Ever since I moved into my apartment, which I grew to love and appreciate I knew that it was home only for a year. Ive been so excited about moving that you can probably find a ger reference in every single blog entry I have made. I had been delayed twice from moving (on June 1st they hadn’t even bought the ger yet let alone built it) and suddenly in one fell swoop I found myself moving the next day.
That’s a good reference to life in some ways. The majority of time we spend looking forward to something happening that feels like it never gets there. Then, something big happens suddenly but your so mellowed from the waiting that it suddenly takes you off guard. Lifes a funny thing…
Packing was not easy. I got a lot of stuff. Where the hell did all this come from? I looked at the pile of care package boxes and got my answer. In essence I got a ton of books, all of which I love (thank you mom, dad, Eric #dude Dresden is a lifesaver# and of course myself for the Star Wars books) along with a winter dell, kitchen gear, food, and many other things.
I woke up the next morning to a knock on my door…time to move. The jijuurs from the school disassembled my bed and carted stuff downstairs into the large van that we use to transport students between schools. It’s a big van, and I still filled it up pretty good. It started to downpour just as we drove off for Bagkhangai.
We pulled into the house and began the ballet of room arrangement. Gers traditionally are set up in a particular order, with your bed at 3oclock and your shrine at 12 oclock and so on. Many PCV’s have less orthodox living styles but I personally felt that if I didn’t like it I could move it all around later so I left the Mongolians to do my decorating for me. The system, like all things Mongolian is based on practicality and order. By the time the Mongolians were done arranging there was still a huge pile of boxes in the center with books and other things they had no idea where they should go. I told them I could handle all of that later (my stove is still not installed and is outside my ger, but its not like I need a fire at the moment and for the time it gives me more space.) As the women filed out to the house in the yard for tea I looked at the jijuur guys who had broke quite a sweat helping me move and knowing full well that if I offered money they would refuse I said the magic words.
“Airag uu?” (want some vodka?) They all grinned. I pulled out a 3/4ths full bottle and they drank it up in under five minutes. I definitely won parting gift points with that! The ladies concluded their tea and the men snuck away with them mildly drunk…and so after all the shuffling I found myself….home….again… wow I move a lot.
Finding a place for everything was a little tricky. I didn’t want to put my books on the floor but it was not like I had a whole lot of choice in the matter. I made a big stack so if a flood happens they wont all get wet. I put some clothes in the dresser but the majority are still in the bags under my bed and my little knick knacks are all back on my dresser including the great Jacobs/Matthews pictures (got one of us at Oktoberfest too Eric) The gers size suits me. When I had lived in the apartment it felt like I had too few things in too big of a space. Now everything fits just about right.
I finally threw the final box aside and sat on my bed (at 3oclock in the ger) and it all came to me. One of those flood moments where you really get caught up in the moment and I realized that I truly had moved into a tent. All my bitching and whining at the beginning about my placement. About my shitty luck and the stomping of my feet and here I am with absolutely everything I wanted all over again. When will I stop making bad first impressions and learn my lesson already that if your patient it will all work out? Probably never. Alas…here I sit, you may have noticed…its been one hell of a couple weeks.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!!!