Thats it for me for March. Im off to a German festival and weather above the freezing mark....

February 28, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.
“The most dangerous assumption people make when they drop a stone is that it will fall down rather than up solely because that is what it has done every single time before.”

It’s directions week! Its that fun week of kinetic learning with my students as we go through forward, back, left, right and north south east west along with turning and when each of them applies. Last year this lesson week was the bane of my existence as I could never get my counterparts to coordinate correctly with me. No such problem this year at all, and the lessons at least for their first day went really well. Next lesson on Thursday we do the maze exercises I developed last year. (give them a maze, tell them they must give you directions to get out. Wild fun)
So plans are little by little materializing about my need for a profession upon my completion of first Peace Corps wraps. The plan tweeks little by little but remains the same in principle: Apply to dream jobs and at the same time have my next Peace Corps volunteering tour roaring to go at the start of 2012. So the dream jobs I am qualified for are at Universities pretty much doing what I did before I got here. Lets me work towards a doctorate, a place to stay, health insurance and since they are dream jobs I would work in either a really kick ass city or near a beach I can surf at. Oh…and an Ivy league school too.
That means the only places ive applied to are Cornell, NYU, University of Hawaii, Georgetown, CalPoly, and Miami, oh and my Alma Mater Fordham University. The other reason these are dream jobs because I physically am not in America until July, and most Universities hire at the end of March and April. I may be qualified to all hell but even sports cars get test driven before being bought right? Still, got an email from Georgetown which I had interviewed at and they want to talk to me again, this time for an hour. Even if I don’t get the job a second, longer interview is rather flattering right?
End of February…about 6 months ago my mom sent me 3 of those insanely long pixy stix tubes. I love pixy stix. They hang just above my bed and I swore I would eat one every three months. I consider it a self imposed test of my willpower to constantly stare at the candy and not eat it. I get to have one tonight as I last had one at the end of November. Go me go!

March 1, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PEACE CORPS!!!!!

The merry merry month of March…meaning of course that we are allegedly at the end of the winter months. Amusingly we are also in the 9th of the nines, which means that the “warm weather has returned.” According to the Mongolian calandar at least. I guess for people who spent millennia wearing clothing made of thick sheep wool yes this weather might finally start to feel warm. For me, it means putting away my sweatpants and instead putting back on my pajama pants of Nintendo characters. It means that (once the most recent snowing on the roads) has melted I can run with even a greater sense of purpose. It also means that little by little I find the need of the fire in my ger less and less. Is it still cold? Yes, but compared to last month, and by a greater extent compared to last winter….the only thing keeping me from going outside is snow from a most recent fall. Some people continue to cook their ger’s with roaring hot fires, turning them into literal saunas. Ill take my sweating running thank you.
It also means thanks to my newfound running that I will be needing more water so as to wash both myself and my clothing. I shall not be returning to UB for the next three weeks and my clothes will require some hand washing. Most Mongolians hate the Spring. The weather is not yet ideal enough to feed their animals and the wind still bites the skin… I did not enjoy the spring last winter but considering we had snow on the ground until the last week of May I don’t even know if we had one. No I have high ambitions for March and April. These next 50 or so days (we have 2 weeks off at the end of March) will be my last as a teacher in Mongolia. Graduation takes place on May 1st (or maybe May 2nd as that is a Monday) and while the school casually remains open class sorta falls by the wayside.
I wonder what I should teach in my final two months of Peace Corps teaching in Mongolia. Any suggestions? I am thinking “Lucky” by Britney Spears. I have already taught Cotton Eye Joe and Country Roads….Lucky is slow lyrics and a popular star. Maybe I should make pizza with my students one day. Make it into a cooking instruction. Wow…that….sounds….AWESOME!!!
Honestly though, its hard to teach to a point in Mongolia. Learning not towards a dissertation has no end. The overwhelming majority of the students at my school do not go on to college or any other higher learning institute. Their state sponsored education ensures that all Mongolians have a most basic and usable set of skills and content knowledge, and their interaction in the school system teaches them the behavioral skills needed to ensure that they can be functional members of society as well. The “talented tenth” as W.E.B. DuBois was known to say go on to advance their education and later become entrepreneurs or leaders of their respectable communities as upbringing does not guarantee placement in Mongolian society. As I write this all out, taking no real stance on the issue, I see how even in this the Mongolian educational system is just so very….very….pragmatic/practical in nature. It’s strange to see this in things that I myself have been a part of now for so long too.
Do you know why most professors of insanely difficult subjects of history end up teaching at least onesurvey level courses? Yes some are forced to but there is another reason as well. After studying for so long on your own you find yourself in a position of hitting a wall of progression so to speak. Simply put you cannot learn more yourself without studying and teaching among others in a similar field. The great thing about learning is that it is not a zero-sum game. Me helping others to learn more does not drain from me, only enhances.
It was definitely a wise move to be placed teaching much younger children this year. Maybe it’s a circumstance directly related to Mongolian youth but the playfulness they posess is so much easier to work with than the chiseled stoicism and machoism which is the Mongolian teenager.

March 3, 2011. The bus on the road back to Bagakhangai, Mongolia

I tell you. It is a good thing that I have made my peace with the city of Ulaanbaatar because I keep having to show up to it. Two days ago my computer died on me again. Same problem. As the repair guys do not work on the weekend I needed to handle this now. So I got permission and headed to UB yesterday. Same building as last time, same dungeon of computer repair guys. Same steps too….take apart the computer, pull the video card, reinsert, start up. It took them six hours. I think they fixed it in an hour and just did not bother to tell me until the building itself was closing but I was too happy to have my computer fixed to care.
This computer is at its endgame though. I wont be doing any more video projects on it. A damn shame as my “Peace Corps 50th/We Didn’t start the fire” had some great lyrics to it. Internet and book writing and the occasional episode of Fringe is all I can stress this machine with doing or I risk killing my computer again. Don’t want that.
So I missed a couple of days of school, but as I have never called in sick this year or missed a day of work I wont beat myself up that badly. I feel like my computer is like my own Millennium Falcon. I type this in while the fan run hard and I just go “hear me baby hold together…”

March 4, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia

Arrogance, manipulation, gaul, sociopathic, asshole. Ask me today what a 9th grade student is like and I would use those adjectives. This was an isolated incident. It has not happened before to this degree of arrogance and the overwhelming majority (ie: Every other student in all my classes) are courteous and respectful students. I am sure I would feel better tomorrow and whatnot but I haven’t let myself get angry about something for a long long time. Not like this…not like this.
So when a student decided to intentionally fly in the face of my authority I was just not able to calm my center enough not to act. The little shit wouldn’t stop playing with his phone. I had an active lesson and everything. He didn’t have to even write anything he just needed to stop using his phone. He wouldn’t, and when he started using it the fourth time I had a bad flashback to exactly last year, when a 7th grader thought making goose honks in front of me would be the hottest thing. Trouble is now I was dealing with a hardened 9th grade student who knew I wouldn’t hit him. Plot thickens.
I walked up the aisle to get the phone and he runs to the window and leans half his body out. I could physically overpower him and drag his body back inside but I didn’t want it to come to that. These are not my usual students and I am filling in for Sarangoo who not only decided to give the class a miss but also decided to leave the school with all the other non-working teachers. Ten minutes, I don’t move, he doesn’t move. Finally they outflank me by sending students outside to get the phone dropped to them. He pulls himself back inside with the whole class cheering him and his defiance of the pacifist teacher and a shit for grin smile on his face on his ability to once again outflank a teacher who wouldn’t touch him….
I am 30 years old. I am twice this little brats size and stature. I have travelled the world, I have taught in schools that would put this little Podunk that odds are he will live out his life in to shame, I have two masters degrees, I turned down the most enjoyable job on the planet to move over to Mongolia so I could actually try to help and teach to those I would never get to meet otherwise and make four dollars a day for the privilege….and while on any other day I get the reward of smiling happy students grateful that I get to learn with them it was on a day like today all I had to show for it was this little brat thinking he was such a big shot because he thought he got away from my authority and that I wouldn’t hit him…. It’s at moments like this that while I don’t excuse crimes of passion I understand how those who would never harm a fly end up doing things they never thought themselves capable of.
My next movements caught both him and the class off guard. I had never laid a hand on any student before so they didn’t expect this of me but I grabbed him by the upper arm/armpit and started walking out of my class. When he started resisting I went cold and dark fast. I kind of frightened even myself with how quickly I reacted. I reached under his arm and put him into a half nelson and started walking him with me like that. The kids laughter died off at this point.
Even then he was trying to wiggle out of it but by then my figurative gloves were off. I was actually using some of my considerable strength to hold him in place. I scared him I think, which I don’t enjoy the thought of. I didn’t want to think I would ever bring myself to this but much like last year this was one of those moments where the early seed of a sociopath was forming, and a young student was finding the advantage of interacting and manipulating those who for some reason would not mean him harm.
With him pinned in a nelson I walked him to the entrance of the school, where the teachers finally saw what I was doing and they did the thing that even in that condition I didn’t do. I was too angry to mind that they did that either. Then I enacted my own form of discipline, I took his ass out of the school. If I could have grabbed him by his breeches I would have literally thrown him.
If it had been up to me he would not be allowed in again for weeks, but most likely he climbed through a window and was back by next class. I also would have broken his phone in front of him too. More than anything though I did demonstrate to him that his manipulation and exploitation of those unwilling to harm him will come to its own consequence. Oh, and I am never teaching that class ever again.

I am going to go run ten miles…

Postscript: Back from running five. Ill run the ten over the weekend. As usual I needed that. Really the whole running thing solves pretty much every problem I have for me. I am still angry as all hell about that kid, but my teaching of 9th grade is over, and I have a skype interview with Georgetown University that I do not want to miss tonight. So atm I am downing a lot of water (another thing I haven’t been having enough of over the past few months) and really all around feeling better. Wish me luck on the interview.

Postpostscript: While waiting alone at the school to do an interview, a drunk man came to the school. A drunk man I recognized but could not put a name to. He had a proposition for me. A very drunken, VERY indecent proposition. Not disgusted or anything, just a little curious where the hell that came from aside from excessive alcohol intake. I politely refused and resolved that matter. I tell you, in Peace Corps you never have a clue what is coming next. Every single step an adventure.

March 5, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Without wireless access this means that weekends in which I do not go to UB I am back to no internet. While very similar to the circumstances I was in last year the additional handicap is that I can no longer play video games on my computer either, or make ridiculous montage music videos and movies that I used to make. Meaning that my computer has little use without internet other that word documents. Actually though considering the number of times ive recently been in UB I could use a little relax time just in my ger.
So…I guess ill write my book, and use my time to also run longer on the weekends. Its been a LONG time (since September) that I ran more than 10 miles in a day, so instead I find myself jogging out 5 and walking the remained back. As the weeks progress ill take away the walking part and then add more on. I am in no dire training rush. Even if UB has a marathon again this year I do not think I will run it. Last year it cost me 80,000 tugriks to run the thing. No medal was given last year and the race course was literally out of town and back. Additionally, I became the hatred of every Eastern bound driver in all of Mongolia. Nothing nice to see at all. Still, I yearn to temper my body back into running condition again, and it gives me an excuse to sober up and shape up too. I like that.
Weekends without internet also mean creative cooking classes. Bruschetta remains one of my favorite things to cook. Easy to do, covers a lot of flavor sensations and pretty damn cheap too. We also got a new shipment of peppers and cherry tomatoes so a rudimentary salad is possible again. I have rationed my Peanut Butter too well as I have over 6 jars of the stuff. Now on my own yes I can eat through peanut butter at record speed, but it means that very often (5 days a week) I spend less than 1000 tugriks (less than a dollar) buying food anymore. Once again, I am for this… come to think of it I have no idea how much money is left in my Mongolian bank account anyway.
I figure one month from now it will be finally above the 40 degree Fahrenheit mark during the day. Its already pretty easy to go outside but to comfortably go hiking I need the temperature at that temp or above. We didn’t get to that until May last year, I am all for an earlier start to warmth this year. Days roll by…one by one by one…. In two weeks I gear up to get on a plane to Germany for beer and morning runs in the English garden. I get back from that and three weeks later we have our End Of Service conference….the following weekday school ends… then its beer tents and playing Frisbee with kids until my mom shows up, then after a week of that it will be time for me to pack my bags (probably a little lighter than when they came) and bring this wild 50th portion of my life to an end. (I am being optimistic and planning on living to be 100 despite heavy amounts of drinking and I lifestyle of higher risk traveling)

…. Wherever is my second year going so quickly?


March 6, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

When you don’t run more than five miles a day you forget two things. Just how absolutely amazing it feels to have that sensation of all around light burn in your legs the following morning, the other being that you get so tired so easily. I did another five mile run this morning and after a peanut butter sandwich I promptly fell asleep at 1pm and snoozed away the afternoon. I can remember since before the summer when I took a nap. Something about the cold and internet use.
From the age of 25 onwards I never had a problem ever getting to sleep. The only problems I have ever had dealing with stress relate to how invigorating it is to me. My body is really good at taking emotional stress and manifesting it as some kind of physical problem, and while meditation has lost its effect on me the way it used to I use running to help clear my mind of distractions for at least a period of time.
This weekend has been eerily without any wind. This is a weird sensation for two reasons. The first being that it is now the month of March means that it is officially Spring, the time where during the day the temperature MIGHT creep above freezing but what picks up even more than it had been over the winter was the howling wind. Last year there were days where I literally crawled my way to the stores or the schools. You might imagine that I prefer the current setup instead. Actually on a day like today without any wind whatsoever and the bright sun shining down you could even feel like you don’t need a coat on to just stand outside and bask in the bright beautiful sun. I love this country.
Salad, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, no alcohol, lots of running, no distracting internet. It’s a comforting feeling this weekend, like I am taking back up a lot of good habits that cold and discomfort had prohibited for so long. School this week I intend to not spend every waking hour at this week. Come back by 2pm when classes for me are done and to run and write more. I like the serenity I am feeling over the last two days, lets keep doing it. I figure a clean bill of health would be nice before I head to Germany and drink strong beer for over a week.
On that note, it looks like my side trip to Vienna will be canceled again. On Friday I went to buy the train ticket from Munich to Vienna and then back again and instead the price had tripled. Damn shame, I was hoping for a “Before Sunrise” type setup.

March 7, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.
Today’s Quote: “I wish I was a lesbian…and you were a man!” –Coupling.

Concert taking place tonight. I remember this concert from last year in Ondortolge. I haven’t been to one of these in months so I am actually looking a little forward to it. I was just informed that because my school is all women (except me) we will be celebrating tomorrows “Womens Day” with a day off of school. Works for me, though I actually don’t teach all that much on Tuesdays anyway. Just another day of exercise and relaxation in my ger. With the wind out its still a hair too cold to be outside recreationally, but it sure is beautiful outside.

Postscript: Didn’t bring my camera, but the concert was not all that epic anyways. Not as bad as the earlier ones, just Ondortolge had a few more dances and a lot fewer songs. Additionally, why on Earth does a country that hates how loud Americans speak (we do) play their concert music to ear bleeding decibles. What the hell man?

March 8, 2011. Bagkahangai, Mongolia.

Day off school, not that it matters as I don’t really teach on a Tuesday anyways. It does mean no internet so instead I strapped back on my shoes and went out running again. Ohf, to run five times a day once again is just so good feeling. Really it does. You know something, while the actual gentle pain sensation in my legs is very good I think I have grown to love a certain element of the post-run here in Mongolia especially. Though in the winter it gets plenty hot this is a country so bloody dry that it can make pretty much anyone not sweat. Luckily if you induce sweating by say running 3-5 miles you then come back and with two ladels of water (I still gotta conserve the stuff!) I rinse up my hair and wash my face with a handful of water. When you splash the water on your face and feel the liquid roll off your face it passes your lips and you can literally taste all the salt in your body that it is finally getting to release. I know in a certain manner the ability I have to actually taste what is coming out of me might be a little disgusting but more still its an awesome thing to actually feel.
So much less stress, feel so much happier, and if I keep this up ill look good for all the German girls when I go sunbathing at the English Gardens. I know that the end of March is not exactly 30 degrees celcius in Munich but I am really just hoping for one or two really sunny, nice days.
I figure for my trip to Munich I will go to the only thing left in the city I have not yet been to, the big imperial palace. I hear it has a decent beer garden with deer in it as well…Germany in two weeks!

March 9, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia

The wireless internet is back up and running at the school. Definitely nothing that happened on this end, so I am chalking it up to whoever in UB runs this for the school actually bothering to look into it. While helpful for me on weekends as I can check my email with that again it also means that my students can also use their computers with internet access once again and access: www.bolortoli.com What would that be you ask? Well I am so glad you asked. Someone (I imagine in UB) has actually begun to set up an online Mongolian-German-English dictionary. HOW COOL IS THAT!!!! I was hoping one day Rosetta Stone would get on board or something but to get an online dictionary means I suddenly can do so many more activities with my students as well!
Wednesday is a rather quiet day as well. The wind which earlier in the week had blissfully been absent has returned with a passion. Not at all painful just deeply noticeable when you walk to school.
Oh, but on the subject of world news. I saw that because of the turmoil in the Middle East that gas prices are going up even higher of late. I am so glad that that no longer concerns me. Not that it was ever that big of a matter to me. I used to own a 1993 Geo Prizm that got gas mileage so amazing for its time that even when I sold it for 400 dollars in 2009 it was still doing better than 90% of the cars on the road. But really, I am so glad I don’t worry about a car while out here…

March 10, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

With the temperature at the exact freezing mark, the sun bright and shining until 7pm and the wind surprisingly light this spring theres only one thing to say. Hot Damn second years of Peace Corps service. I no longer even make a fire at night (cold but with a blanket for me manageable) I think I might even be able to put away the winter coat and take back up my blue jacket I use to run in. Mongolia is so damn beautiful. It really is. Its one of those countries that can take over half a century of crappy Soviet building designs and still turn rusting piles of derelict building into something amazing to look at time and time again.
My running game has really picked up this week. Glad to know that even at 30 nothing specific hurts and everything crackles with a light burn at the end of a great sweat inducing calorie/stress burning run. Weekend is tomorrow, ill stick around this weekend in town as well. I have enough provisions and immediately following the next weekend I leave for Germany, might as well get some face time in my town.
Funny thing. Today it was so nice out that on the way back from buying some Orange Juice at the delguur (I wont be buying alcohol tonight obviously) I walked by the area where my town has a sort of tiny playground set up. Korean missionaries like to drop in over the summers to small towns like ours and give the gift of the word of God….and playgrounds. Actually they are all around great guys and girls, and the playground works. They even set up a swing set. Today when walking back, it was so nice out that I was compelled to walk over to it. Its small, designed for just after toddlers, but the great thing was that when I sat down on the swing I got a REALLY surreal flashback. All the way to Wolftrap elementary school. Which had, bar none the most kick ass swing set on the planet. I hadn’t sat on a swing in decades, and as I rocked back and forth all these old memories I hadn’t thought of in forever just suddenly shook loose and I burst out laughing. I wish I could say Mongolia is famous for getting me to burst out laughing, but I do that in America already as well…Mongolia just brings up a lot of unique instances.
Once again Mongolia gave me another reason to love it when a little kid came by and sat on the swing next to me and started to talk to me. A small whiff of my American sentiments kicked back in when I realized that I was a full grown man talking to a little boy who was not related to me on a playground. You see, that just doesn’t even register in Mongolians as a problem or something to keep an eye on or anything. I don’t know the magic formula but the problem that this would be in America (with good reason) is just not what happens here. So yea, I can sit next to a little kid on a swing at a playground and the only reason Mongolians think that I am weird is that I was making a lot more money before I came to this country.

Hehehe…. Its been another funny month. It only gets brighter and warmer from here as well…It’s a happy twilight, the realization of the end approaching with still so much time to savor. I am really doing this right.


March 11, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Month 21 of my time in Peace Corps is getting started on a Friday. How considerate of it! My haasha family (actually sorta only my dad as he is the only one actually living here these days) has begun this interesting habit of continuously using my water. In three days he has taken over 30 liters of my 70 liter drum. I get the strange feeling he just does not want to go on a water run …Its…surprising would be the word I would use. Just of all the places to be lazy in a Mongolian lifestyle leeching water seems a little strange to me. Not important enough for me to care, and I actually like to get water now that its warm out.
I have been keeping tabs on what happened in Wisconsin. Its just a magnet for an all around argument taking place in America these days. Rational voices are getting quieter and quieter and people with a single radical objective on one end of the political spectrum or another are getting more and more people to their cause. I don’t like the sound of it.
Last year…granted I only got world news once a month but last year things seemed to be going a lot better in politics than they are now. What the hell happened? A year ago as the vote for health care reforms rolled through chants of “Yes We Can” took place in Congress and it seemed to me like aside from the ultra right getting angry we actually had a real sense of change and progression in America. All I see in the news now is everyone arguing. Left is not happy that Obama works with moderates, the right is not happy because they are not in power, the ultra right is angry because they don’t have more influence with the moderate right, “what the hell” sounds appropriate doesn’t it?
The only thing I know for sure is that Wisconsin, Idaho and a lot of other states are for some reason turning to public schools and teachers in looking for places to save money. I wont get myself started on where money actually needs to be saved (we have spent less money on Peace Corps in 50 years than the US military spent on its occupation in Iraq alone for one day!!!!! ….okay so I got started) but instead ill simply put don’t fuck with us teachers. Were already not treated well and we have a LOT of influence on the youth of America. And yes, in the capacity of being a teacher that is a threat!
Many liberals may fear 2012, but if you ask my opinion it’s a good place for the left to get their house back in order. To bury whatever conservative the Republicans agree upon and demonstrate that while we don’t always agree with one another we all REALLY don’t want Gingrich/Romney/Huckabee/…Palin…or anything else the Right has to offer. Romney is the conservatives best chance (with a most likely ultra conservative vice president candidate), and when the left realizes in 2012 whats on the line I expect perhaps not a blowout against the conservatives but the all important executive branch will remain in control of the left. Common America, get it together out there! I REALLY don’t want to return to America and have to think that I missed a small golden age of political prosperity while in Peace Corps service!
As per the gas price spike….not suggesting im telling: everyone in America stop driving cars. Like, right now too! I mean it. Take up biking, get better public transportation going, get the damn fuel cell cars out and running or just walk dammit, youll lose weight and cut back on health care costs in America too! Frankly I don’t care what way we go about getting cars off the road, but stop trying to shape politics to get gas prices cheaper!!!!!
Too much politics for me, im getting a beer.

March 12, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Let me tell you. When you reach 30 years of age…when you have lived in a country that makes outdoor activities impossible for nearly half of the year….when you drink VERY excessively alcoholic liquors you don’t even like the night before…and you still somehow run over 20 kilometers or half of a marathon in the midst of March and the only thing you wish for is water and a good classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation…well let me just say that in terms of health I have made more than enough bad calls but I must be doing something right!
I can get old without an ounce of complaint so long as I can keep running the way that I did today.
It was a glorious run! I also had a great Peace Corps moment. I helped an old lady carry coal across town. This needs some in depth explaination. I had just hit two hours and ten minutes. Knowing my pace that meant I had hit 13 miles. My running was over. I was less than a kilometer from the town but as I ran back towards town on the road was the woman, she was lugging two bags of coal. She was tiny, as many old Mongolian women are. As in Hobbit sized. A meter and change if that. So here I come jogging along and she is lugging her weight in coal. Who on earth could not help in this situation? It was the “lady across the street” moment of Mongolia. Seriously it was. Think about it. Whats the thing scouts do? We help old ladies cross streets. Well in this country we don’t have a whole hell of a lot of streets and every kid scout or not knows how to start a fire and tie every knot on the planet from the age of three. So what do we do as scouts in this country since we have the American scout stuff burned into our memory? We help women carry their coal to their ger. That’s what I did. Really it was not trouble at all. The bags were sturdy enough and with a bag on each shoulder I walked along side this nice old lady who I had never had the pleasure of meeting from my little town before. We chatted away idly in Mongolian while walking too. Yes I had rested well…yes the weather was wonderful…yes I was running because I like to run…yes I am an American part of a teacher helping program…yes students and work are always good…and so on. A kilometer later we had reached her ger and he two grandsons ran out and grabbed the coal bags off my shoulder. The woman held out her arms to me. I figured she wanted to hold hands or hug me (at least in my part of Mongolia outside your direct family you never touch) but she grabbed me close and then sniffed both my cheeks (the Mongolian equivalent of a kiss) and waved me goodbye. Some days I talk about how lousy teaching at the school feels, how its not the reason I joined the Peace Corps. The reaction I got from this woman I had never met. The way I think from now on a woman as old as my Grandmother in America who had never even spoken to a foreigner before got to speak to an American in Mongolian about day to day life in town and how her only memory of me is giving her a hand taking a coal supply from one side of town to the other….THAT is why I joined the Peace Corps. THAT is what is worth giving up your dream job in America…THAT is how you bring about world peace. You don’t care about the big picture, you dedicate yourself to the grassroots, for better or for naught you help those to no greater end and to those who may in the end not even know your name…. When people ask me about the Peace Corps and what I did. Aside from maybe on a job interview I am not going to tell them about the teaching aspect of my time here. No I am going to tell you the American taxpayers dollars were spent allowing me to help old Mongolian women carry bags of coal. That it helped me introduce old Mongolian women to Americans for the first time in their long lives. That they actually got to see one of us in action on a day to day life and how we are really no different from the overwhelming majority of the people on the planet….thats worth more than a thousand well paid teachers, or all the wireless internet the earth can suck down on. It’s a good day. A really really good day.

March 13, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

10 days until my German vacation. The wind is back to full force here in Mongolia and I am glad for a small chunk of it I will find myself in Germany. Warmer weather, no wind, good running paths and plenty of tasty beer. Paradise! By the time I get back at the start of April it is only 3 weeks until graduation!
Tonight for dinner instead of using money to buy beer I bought some Chimjuu (bell peppers) Songin (onion) and Luuvan (carrots) to make a decent salad topped with extremely bitter Italian Salad dressing I created myself (I am not complaining of the taste of the dressing, its just a flavor sensation you rarely get around here) I also cut up some bread and had some nice Bruschetta with some hummus to boot. Just need a different climate, an ocean some olives and wine and you wouldn’t even need to know its Monoglia!
This upcoming week I plan to have an easy end to the third quarter. Ill show the kids a movie called “Mousehunt” on Monday and for Thursday and Friday ill test the kids on their directions by having them move “forward, back, left, right” for me. Ill do a UB run on the weekend to get my clothes and affairs in order and then I am heading back on next moday or Tuesday to catch that radical plane ride.
Fun closing fact. Once I have taken a plane from Ulan Bator to Munich, I will have finally gone all the way around the world. I have been as far east as Greece and was far west as the Similian Islands in the Indian Ocean, but I never really have gone all the way around. This trip will close that gap forever. Go me!!!!!

March 14, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

The wind is out in full fury the past couple of days. It has totally knocked off my exercise routine unfortunately, thank goodness I got that long run in. Seriously the wind is shaking the very foundation of my ger as I type this. It rises and falls, squeezes and bends. You really see that roundness of the ger stemmed from nothing than the sheer need to keep their homes upright. I checked the weather and its supposed to stay like this until I leave for Germany. Common Josh, its one lousy week left and then as much vacation as you can cram into the period of eleven days.
“Mousehunt” went over very well with both students and teachers in my school. Its good ole slapstick comedy of two funny guys trying to get rid of a mouse. Seriously what could go wrong right? I got them to write out ten English words of things they knew from the movie so I could call it an English lesson. Ill show them the second half Thursday and then Friday….meh, ill think of something. See Josh? Its not even Tuesday and the week is already sort of over!

March 15, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Nothing really to do today. The wind remains too brutal to run a whole lot and without classes I also REALLY am trying to stop using the internet. The only thing in the news now is that terrible meltdown in Japan and all it does is make me feel bad. Tomorrow ill have some classes, that will distract me.
I think I need to make 2 UB trips. Ill go on the weekend for some R+R as well as getting a package from the Peace Corps office and get all my winter clothes a good machine wash. (Don’t need them anymore) Ill drag it all back on Monday, and then on Tuesday get back to UB for my trip to the Airport the next morning. I promise I have not been counting the minutes to this thing, its just the only thing I can really think to type about when I sit down and start writing. The book is not going as well as I hoped. Writing about my early interest in Peace Corps is hard because I never really wrote it all down, and I have changed so much that sometimes it is hard for me to actually recall how I felt from the beginning….still, nothing but time to spare so nothing too big of a deal.
The news from Japan is getting worse and worse. Not good…worse still there really is not a whole hell of a lot to be done by anyone but those actually on the ground itself trying to get some water on these plants. Foxnews is critiquing our President for going on a golf trip while the Middle East riots and the Japan meltdown takes place….what exactly do they suggest? That he hold a fire hose or something? Where was this critique when our former president spent over one third of his presidency at his Texas ranch…America your memory and attention span is the equivalent of me when I was nine years old.

March 16, 2011. Bagkhangai, Mongolia.
“Damn Cheap Chinese toothbrush. They can make a chicken taste like an Orange but when it comes to oral hygene they really phone it in.” –American Dad

I found out what both my American and Mongolian bank balances are. Relative to how poor I usually feel I was pleasantly surprised. I love when that happens! So I now have both plenty of Mongolian dough which I plan to spend on some luxury items I am also going to probably be able to go on my side trip to Vienna. I actually have been toying with the idea of going to some of the smaller towns of Bavaria and trying their starkbiers as well, and while I shamelessly both love this festival and this beer that may be a little too clingy even for me. Jury’s out, but I better figure out soon. Ill be in Germany in a weeks time.
Teaching goes well. Not a whole lot to report about that. I got a grant proposal out to buy more toys for our kindergardeners but they are going to move into our school next year (my town is building a new school for secondary education the coming year) and they will have plenty of room to wiggle about. I know a lot of bad things are happening in the world around me right now. The meltdowns, the likelihood of an American second recession thanks to the oil price spike, the famines, the uncertain days to come…but I tell you living in a small Mongolian town has a way of allowing you to ignore so much. It allows you to be happy, especially at the cost of forces beyond my control and at no cost to the moment of happiness I experience of the smallest victories. Buddha would be very happy for me about that. I know how some of my entries must sound, but I promise you I am not a Buddhist. I imagine my rampant drinking would immediately disqualify me from his good graces anyway. May tomorrow bring yet another wonderful day like today…or not…whatever.

March 17, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.
“Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing…” –Dammit why the hell did a fictional car have to make such an accurate statement. It makes my quotes seem so stupid…yea they kinda are…

Ive been in Peace Corps too long. Too often I have been thinking of things to do in Germany and then fold when I think of the price. Screw it, im going for the cool stuff. Ill land on the 23rd, get a Unimator (it’s a beer) and then the next morning get on a train to Vienna. Ill spend two days there, including one where I go to a couchsurfers party. I haven’t actually been on that group very long but now that I looked at it I cant believe I was not on this sooner. By the by, as I am on it now if anyone swings by Bagakhangai my floor is completely at your disposal! So after those two days ill come back and spend a night drinking it up in Munich, then on the 27th ill take the train up north to Nuremberg. I have been there before and while there is no festival it’s a wonderful town and another couchsurfer meeting is taking place so ill drop in for that. Then on the 29th ill go back to Munich where there is yet another couchsurfer event taking place. The following four days ill go on long runs in the English Garden and along the Isar river and by night get falling down drunk on good beer. Less than a week away!


March 18, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.
“that’s a German thing right? You guys like climbing mountains.” –Brad Pitt

Hehe…so something funny happened. The are remaking the movie “Red Dawn” for the modern age. We all know Red Dawn right? Soviets take over America…teens run for the hill…”Wolverines!”…all that good stuff right? Well for the modern remake we obviously cant be conqured by the Soviets anymore so China became the next big enemy.
None of this is new, and the movie is all but in the can. However, a plot twist of the modern age has sprung up. People don’t want the idea of China and America at war, so much so they are rewriting the plot of the movie so that thanks to some form of coup the North Koreans are leading the assault (with the assistance of their puppet allies such as China) this means that all the China flags and Mandarin spoken during the film is being post edited to be North Korean flags and Korean spoken… hehe…
The entire plot of Red Dawn is far fetched to begin with, but I am sorry this is going to destroy the movie…not that I imagine it will be all that good anyway. Were so afraid of making a fictional movie of superpowers fighting that they change whole movie plots! Lighten up everybody would you!
This does however mean now that the plot of the new “Red Dawn” will be shockingly similar to a video game now available in America called “Homefront” I have watched the gameplay on youtube. The main character you play is a guy with the last name Jacobs…how touching.
Today is the end of the third Quarter. UB trip this weekend, back Monday, back to UB Tuesday, Munich by noon on Wednesday. I have to think of something to do with my laptop. It’s a piece of garbage but I still require it to work for typing and interviews and the like. Hidden in my ger seems the most prudent. If I give it to my school to hang on to they will probably use it, and no offense town but I don’t really trust you all that much especially with a tempermental laptop.
Anyways, today is Soldiers Day, which also kind of doubles as “Mens Day” as well. There is a very nice pony show in which every veteran walks around in a dell with their decorations displayed and those in active service either put on the blue uniform (the womens uniform looks like something a flight attendant would wear) and they all march and salute and stuff like that. The officer members look like SS officers. The holiday celebrating the soldiers is very nice, but guys pretty much use it as an excuse to drink excessively. I hate it. I passed three mobs of drunken men on my way home from school today. I don’t recognize them, never spoken to the majority of the time and their large numbers brought out the absolutely infuriating machoism all Mongolian men carry. They are all crotch grabbing douches in that state calling me a woman and demanding I buy them more vodka.
I almost always drink alone in this country. Naturally I agree that this under normal circumstance is a sign of alcoholism, Maybe I actually an alcoholic who has never done anything unforgivable under the influence….but in this country if you are a Peace Corps Volunteer and you live in a town as the only foreigner drinking alone is a survival tool.
You think drunken Americans are annoying ladies? We don’t hold a candle to Mongolian men when it comes to being obnoxious hands down ill take a mob of tanked Americans over Mongolian men anyday. I think my medical officer would be glad to know that because I am the only foreigner in town that I drink alone. This goes beyond social order and into health too. My outhouse “sickle” is covered in blood, and it sure the hell is not mine…good gods why do they do this to themselves? Believe me I am the LAST person you will hear telling people not to drink. I myself have taken down whole bottles of liquor by myself at times as well. Yet let me tell you, the very second I go to the outhouse in the morning (gods bless my insane regularity) and I see blood…oh I am headed straight for sobriety! Common guys, quit killing yourselves this way…so unnecessary.

Postscript: 9pm
By the by I am officially upgrading my family condition from estranged to full on separated. Dad is not taking it very well, and as he uses my phone on a daily basis to attempt to contact my mother with unsuccessful and usually angry results I have begun to stop buying more time on my phone. Instead I let him use it, realize I have no tugriks on it and it usually means he retreats to his ger unhappy. Don’t get me wrong, midday my dad is a cheery, happy go lucky type but when he comes over to use my phone he is in the foulest moods, and trust me he is never more annoying than at that time. As I type this he is right now spent the last 25 minutes calling pretty much anyone he knows seeing if they can help pinpoint where my mother is right now. Luckily I can play both the fool and the foreigner and just let his fit come to its end. He’s not violent or even a drinker but if I ask for my phone back or tell him he has outstayed his welcome that would not end well. I obviously don’t know the specifics of what is going on, but it is safe to say that this is a problem he wants to fix but cannot. I have a gut instinct that his wife is simply done with him, and that nothing he says will change her mind.
The matter is beyond his control, and when you think about it there really is no greater frustration one can come across then that right? Its so out of context, but it even reminds me of my difficulty with Rachael. I see my Mongolian father sitting on the floor of my ger right now as I type this chain smoking away as he tries to call yet another person fruitlessly to get in touch with her and I wonder if this is how I appeared to my mother years ago when I sat in her basement for months crying and drinking because I had no actual way of addressing a difficulty with someone who would not speak to me anymore. I pity him, and can only imagine that is what everyone else has done who has seen me in my lesser of days of woe.

March 21, 2011. Nayras Café, Mongolia.

So, a little back and forth between me and UB and now my ger is full of clean winter clothes, some of which may never see use again as well as the logistics of having everything ready for my vacation locked away. I just came from the Peace Corps office and gave them a copy of all my hostels, rail and plane tickets, the idea naturally being to know WHERE I might go wrong if things end up missing.
Additionally, I got to find out that if I am interested in Peace Corps again in 2012 that all my medical information will indeed be able to transit over, including dental! The fortune that will save me. Also it turns out as an RPCV and willing to work any real field means that yes Geographically I can be a little more precise the second round. That was all excellent to hear. A good omen of my upcoming vacation. I am packing rather bare boned for the trip, but it will allow me the maximum amount of dexterity and the like.
The computer should be safe locked away at the guesthouse here. Ten days without a computer will do me some good. I think ill sober up the next few days while here. Stay in, drink lots of water, eat some good pizza….pregame so to speak. Theres a lot on my mind, but ill be honest I really am going to put all my worries of the future on backburner for a few weeks and just really get a good breather to help me strengthen up for my last few months of Peace Corps service.

Ill upload this to the blog now, make a vacation post when I get back. PICTURES!!!!!