June 11th, 2011. On the way out....
I spent the last night in my ger alone. I was sober and quiet the whole night. I had planned to watch the last episode of a great number of TV shows, which I did as well. The very last being Star Trek: The Next Generation’s finale entitled “All Good Things” This morning I woke up to June 11th 2011. The two year anniversary of my time in the Peace Corps. I dragged my heavy and cumbersome bags out of my ger, took a final look…and locked it up. I lived a year of my life in that tiny little tent. An amazing year… 1/100th of my life… (what the hell, ill be an optimist. My granddad is 90 for crying out loud!)
I stopped at the school, had a goodbye party from my friends and colleagues in the town, Sarangoo silver tongued her way into convincing me to give her my camera that was not working very well anyway. I was given a tacky tapestry of Chinngis Khan and his mighty empire. It’s the one tourists buy at 99 cent stores… and its probably going to hang in my future apartment room. We imbue ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it. Things that are irreplaceable and priceless hang in millionares mansions with no actual bond or connection to them at all. That tapestry has a million other copies in this country but this is “MY” tapestry given to me as a gift for two years of living service from the peoples of Bagakhangai Mongolia. That is what imbue is, where something worthless becomes priceless to one person alone…
At the bus I took a final look around…a long one too because the driver was out of Diesel fuel which is only hilarious if you live here and you know how hard diesel is to dig up now. I live here so I get the joke…Well I lived there anyway.
I still have nine full days in the Peace Corps. They will be spent in beer tents and collecting stool samples for medical (not at the same time obviously) and for all intensive purposes yes im done here. My stepfather Eric arrives and then I take the train into China, and its only a week after that that I am stateside again for the first time in two years…
Where the hell did two years go????
Its getting a little more scary now. Not scary as in I have no idea what I am doing. Far from it, I have a thousand things I want to and for all intensive purposes can do… the reason im scared is my lifelong goal is over at the age of 30. I am not full of shit. I bedrock know that to myself now. I am proud of myself…really I am… but in the whimsical final words of the Buffy musical: “…where do we go…from here…?” Nah, its post partum thingy.
Little by little ill get this all sorted out. This guesthouse is now absolutely swamped with my stuff, and this afternoon I am off to drop off the fire extinguisher, first aid kit, space heater, and smoke detector… all never used. Lucky me… From there I go and buy a suitcase with wheels so I am more mobile. After that I write my closing report to Peace Corps
…and after that I guess theres nothing to do for the final week but to breathe. Not so much drinking this final week I think. Maybe ill go on a UB adventure of some sort. Ill take the buses out in every direction as far as I can go and then walk back to the center of town (pockets empty of course) Maybe ill go to the black market and spend a day at the entrance counting people. Maybe ill go to the state department store and see if anyone ever actually truly does buy the grand piano on the 4th floor that is different everytime I visit the building.
For some reason everything I do now seems like an amazing adventure…
The world was huge to me before I joined the Peace Corps….now its endless.
I only have a few final entries into this blog before I may bring it to an end. If I join Peace Corps again I may provide a link to my next blog or something but yea, this is not a trilogy…and further service is not a sequel. This tome of a blog read by myself and five other people will stand alone and on its own…
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