For pictures supporting this post: http://picasaweb.google.com/jacob.stiglitz/ecuadorandperu/

Well, I’m writing - which means I’ve been traveling. Before I start talking about the trip, I should quickly write about the previous six months that I haven’t written anything. Work at QuestBridge has been going really well. We were able to match over 200 students from all around the countries with full scholarships to our 20 partner colleges this year. We are hoping that we will see a similar increase (almost double) in admissions through regular decision as well for the other applicants. I’ve moved into a great apartment in Palo Alto about 2 miles away from work, so I can bike. I live with two roommates who I found on Craigslist, and we all get along great. Kacey is in her second year as a PhD student in psychology at Stanford. Priscilla went to Stanford and is now working for an economic litigation consulting firm in Menlo Park (about a mile past where I work and across the street from my friend from Pomona who works at their competitor). Over Thanksgiving, I bought a white BMW from Alan’s sister, and, after a quick unexpected trip to the mechanic, it made the trip back from Arizona just fine. So, onto the trip. My aunt and uncle, Joe and Anya, invited me to come with them to Ecuador and Peru for 2 weeks. Fantastic! The timing couldn’t have been better either, because it was right before the week between Xmas and New Year’s which I got off from work anyway. The trip started right after work on Friday. I rushed home from work to grab my bags (with clothes for summer in South America as well as winter in Maine and Tahoe later), got on the train, and got stuck on it for about two hours. We actually got off at one point, got on a different train for about 20 minutes, only for them to have us get back on the first train with all of the passengers from the second train as well. Not surprisingly, however, the plane was delayed as well, so I didn’t miss the first leg of the flight, SFO to LAX. I got to LAX at about 11pm, and found a comfortable place on the ground to sleep until my 6am flight to Miami. I don’t think sleeping there would have been too bad, as I can usually sleep through just about anything, but for some reason they felt like they should play a bunch of different renditions of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ really loudly. Needless to say, I slept really well on the cross-country flight. Miami to Quito went well, and I sat next to this very sweet lady originally from Ecuador who told me all about what I should do while there during the flight, and even gave me the numbers of her nieces and nephews to call to show me around once I got there. Ecuador- For the first time in my life, there’s a guy waiting for me at the airport with my name on a sign. My Spanish is basically non-existent, but the driver talked to me anyway for 30 minutes straight to the hotel, which was easily the nicest hotel I’ve ever been to. Hotel Plaza Grande is located in none other than Plaza Grande, Quito’s old-town. It was well after dark when I arrived, but the view from the hotel was still beautiful, overlooking all of the lights of the houses on the hills surrounding the area. I spent the next day doing what I usually do when I arrive in a new city: ignore the guide book and walk until I’m completely lost. Quito is a huge city, and I couldn’t possibly walk the whole thing in a day, but the parts I was able to see were really beautiful. I poked my head in some really neat churches, where the influence of the native people could definitely be felt. There were a ton of squares, parks, and markets with people hanging out having a seemingly good time. My uncle arrived that night. We went to the only restaurant I’ve ever been to where they had tobacco flavored soup. Of all of the things I’ve eaten in my life, however, I couldn’t actually bring myself to try it. We left early the next morning for Cuenca, the third largest and “Cultural Capital” of Ecuador. Cuenca was my favorite city of the trip, set in a very high valley in the mountains. There were four rivers that ran through the city, which join with each other and eventually become the Amazon river. The town is about 300,000 people, who all appeared to be very friendly. We stayed in this beautiful hotel in the middle of the city which used to be an old manor home called Mansion. Cuenca is the first place where my uncle was giving a talk. It was really funny for me going around to this (and later) places with him because everyone assumed that I must be some sort of important person as well, but they just weren’t sure who I was. They would ask if I was an economist as well, and when I said no, they were simply at a loss as to why I was there. By the end of the trip I was answering that I will be an economist by the end of the trip, and they always thought that was funny. I learned a lot from my uncle on the trip, and I think everything that we was saying makes complete sense- people should do a better job listening to him. I’m not going to do him the injustice by trying to repeat or even summarize what he said, but basically the world would be a better place if people focus less on immediate monetary gains for the rich and more on sustainable long term gains for the people who actually need the money. We spent our days in Cuenca touring around. One day was spent doing your typical tourist stuff: churches, museums, etc. There was one art museum which was pretty neat because (in addition to the art) it used to be a jail house for drunks, until they all escaped. Since then they’ve used it for a variety of purposes, now as an art museum, using one cell per artist. The other day we began by touring some of the factories which are housed in Cuenca. We went to a place where they make leather goods, a ceramic tile factory, recycled paper, and a Panama hat museum/factory. Panama hats are actually made in Cuenca, but are called Panama hats because they were shipped through Panama on the way to Europe, where they became famous at a World’s Fair in the late 1800s. The things you learn on a trip like this! We also did some great outdoorsy sightseeing as well. We traveled to an even higher elevation, close to where the mountains became snow capped, to this beautiful pond up in the mountains. We also went to a church that had a magnificent view of the city. The setting is truly great, and I hope that it doesn’t grow too much more, so as to keep the “small town” feel of the place. We flew back to Quito where we were supposed to be greeted by Anya, but her plane had been rerouted to Columbia instead. She was, of course, rather unhappy with the whole situation, which they only succeeded at making worse by doing everything they could to make the situation the most inefficient possible. The rest of our stay in Ecuador was riddled with seemingly unlucky and/or unreasonable events, none of which had any effect whatsoever on our having a good time: Joe needed to get dental work done, there was a city employee holiday which closed a few museums, and there was a meeting scheduled in a town about 90 minutes away in order to allow us to visit this town famous for its market, yet we arrived too late for it. Luckily, however, Joe was able to survive with the tooth, other museums were open, and the was another market at the town for us to visit. And we are off to Peru! Peru was more of a whirlwind. I don’t think we stayed more than a day at any one place. Sightseeing in Lima, flying to and sightseeing in Cuzco, train to Machu Picchu, visiting other Incan ruins on the way back to Cuzco, fly back to Lima and poke around a little bit more, and then fly back to the US. Anya’s friend Beth joined us in Peru, celebrating having just finished a book. Anya and I did a full day of sightseeing in Lima the first day, and I think we did pretty good considering the size of the city. Lima is huge, which is partly due to a huge part of the population moving to the city during the 80s when there were terrorists in the countryside. The first day was really nice out, which is unfortunately a fairly rare occurrence. Apparently, there is a thick fog that sits over the city most of the time, similar but worse to what we are accustomed to in San Francisco. But, we were able to go to some great museums and churches in, and we ate at the oldest deli in the city (country?) – delicious! It was a fairly easy flight to Cuzco, but since we arrived fairly late in the day, we decided to go straight out and sight see rather than do the typical hour or two of rest that you are supposed to do in order to adjust to the altitude. Cuzco is another amazing city, both in its architecture and setting. Unfortunately, it has reached the point where enough of the population exists on tourism that some of them will really chase you down and bother you to buy things from them or go to their store. A great deal of the city still uses the foundations of the buildings left over from Incan times, which you can tell just by looking at the stones which are smooth and placed directly on top of one another without the use of mortar. We stayed at another amazing hotel here, which was a converted monastery, called nothing other than Monastereo. It was a really beautiful hotel but found ourselves slightly unimpressed when we noticed that the housekeepers were cleaning the “oil paintings” with Windex and a rag…. My uncle’s talk at the University of Cuzco that night was received like none other I have ever witnessed. Despite the use of one of the worst translators I have ever seen (and keep in mind I’ve lived in Mongolia), the students were awestruck by him and what he had to say (which was of course drastically shortened and simplified on the fly to compensate for the translator). After the speech/ceremony, they swarmed him, asking for photos and signatures. They were even asking me for signatures and pictures, which I found more than amusing. Just think – “Hey, you won’t believe what I got last night – the autograph of the nephew of the great economist Joe Stiglitz!” Apparently, last year’s economics major had adopted him as the “patron professor” for their class, and having him actually come to speak was more than they could ever have hoped for. The class along with a few professors took us out to dinner afterwards which was very nice of them. The next morning, we arose bright and early to hop on the Hiram Bingham, which is the luxury train that goes to Machu Picchu. I really love trains, and being on one as classy as this one was a real treat for me. I’ll have to write more about my love of trains at some point, but as this post has gone on for 3 pages already (and not quite close to done yet), I’ll spare any readers from doing it here. The country that we went through was amazingly beautiful though, with steep mountains on both sides; everyone chose to stand in the viewing car rather than sitting at their tables. We stopped at the bottom, and hopped on a bus which was to take us to up the mountain to this extremely impressive spot. When you get to Machu Picchu, you can immediately understand why the Incans chose to build their city there. We all agreed that while the ruins were beautiful, this place would have been worth traveling to even if there were no ruins there. But, the ruins were there, which made it even better, and it was such a fun day exploring them and imagining what life must have been like for these people who lived there, really, not all that long ago. For a people who had not invented the wheel, their irrigation and architectural feats are quite impressive. We took a train the next morning about half-way back, and stopped at a village where people were still living in the original Incan huts. We also stopped in one of the huts to see how they lived and were greeted by about 100 guinea pigs (which are a not-so tasty delicacy of the area). There were also a lot of interesting things on the shrine, such as skulls of their ancestors, dried baby lamas, some strange dolls, and, of course, a picture of Jesus. From here we drove back, stopping at a great market and a llama/alpaca farm along the way. The rest of the trip was mainly getting back at this point. A little time in Cuzco, flying to Lima, and then flying back to the US. I spent a few hours in New York before heading up to Maine for Christmas, where I hadn’t been in about 2 years at this point. I was in Tahoe for New Year’s, and now I’m finally back in Palo Alto. I left out a lot of really amazing things in this post, but with the length being what it is…. I guess I can just list some of them:

-meeting the president of Ecuador,

-going on a date to Burger King with Miss Cuenca,

-going clubbing with Columbian models,

-some amazing dinners with business and political leaders,

-my aunt being offered plastic surgery,

-running into my aunt’s friends and a girl from my high school,

-eating guinea pig, llama, and alpaca,

-etc., etc., etc.

If you have actually read through this far, than you can tell that it was an absolutely amazing vacation. I’ll sign off here with my typical, “I’ll try to write more than I have been,” but in all likelihood, you’ll hear from me next time I have the opportunity to travel.

Well its amazing how quickly 6 months can go by. I've almost been back in America now for as long as I was in Mongolia. I guess I was avoiding writing anything in the blog as I really wasn't sure what I was doing with my life. It was easy to think that in a few weeks everything would be back on track and I could write an update then. Well, I guess a few weeks turned into half a year. Damn.

So, between Mongolia and now... Let's see. The first few weeks were filled with trying to get back to Mongolia. I applied to just about every organization there to find something to do. Although I received several responses, it became pretty clear that finding something that would pay me to do something I wanted to do was going to be pretty difficult.

I also spent some of this time thinking that I would just sign back up for Peace Corps. I eventually decided that if I do want to do Peace Corps again in the future, it would be there. But no reason to rush back in immediately.

Then I spent a while figuring out what to do with my life next. I think I applied to be an entertainer on a cruise line, a programmer at google, a director of greek life and everything in between. I was also beginning to look at a Master's on another semester at sea-like program (thescholarship.com), which I still haven't ruled out as a possibility for some point in the future.

I took a trip to Israel with the Birthright Program, which I would recommend to anyone who considers himself Jewish or who has a mother who does. I've been fortunate to see a great deal of the world, but being in Israel was a very unique experience that was filled with warmth and hope that I haven't felt many other times in my life. It felt akin to going to a family-member's house that you may have never met before, but you feel more than welcome none the less.

As the job search got more and more frustrating with acceptances from places I decided I really didn't want to work mixed in with a lack of responses from places that I really did, I stumbled upon a job posting that excited me enough to respond to immediately despite my mom having just called me to dinner. The job was with an organization that I had actually known about and had been to their website before but they weren't offering a position that interested me. I was excited enough to actually try calling them the next day to ensure that my application would be read, only to get voicemail. After months of job searching, getting next to no responses, and only weeks later if that, QuestBridge called me the day after I tried calling them to set up an interview. I really knew right then that this is the job for me.

However, before I got the job, I had to go through a pretty entertaining interview process. The job that I hadn't been interested in when I had previously visited the website was for a software engineer. Coincidentally, my resume has enough computer jargon in it to trick someone with no programming skills into thinking that I am a programmer, which is what I ended up being interview for. However, I still thought I was interviewing for the Recruitment Associate position. This lead to a pretty confusing few hours that resulted in an email suggesting that the software engineer position at QuestBridge wasn't the right fit for me, but maybe I should consider the Rec Assoc position. Well, a carefully crafted email letting them know that I, in fact, was applying for said position had everyone laughing at the situation when I came back for another interview about a week later. I proved myself capable and am now a proud employee of QuestBridge.

A little about QuestBridge: Michael McCullough founded a program a program called Quest Scholars 13 years ago, and QuestBridge is a venture of that program. Quest Scholars is a 5 week, intensive summer camp for low-income high schoolers to help prepare them for college. Most of the graduates of the summer camp have gone on to either Stanford or Harvard. QuestBridge

is a different program started 3 years ago that helps high-achieving low-income students get into the countries top-performing colleges. We currently work with 19 partner schools, including Stanford, Amherst, Columbia, Princeton, and Pomona, which is where I learned about the program while serving on the admissions committee my senior year (that list of schools might sound familiar to some of you). The program provides a free application that has more room for the students to highlight their achievements and the obstacles they have overcome. They can then choose from up to 8 colleges to be matched with (like when applying to medical school) during the early admissions phase. If matched in this manner, the commitment is binding, so the student has to attend the school, and the school has to guarantee four years of full scholarship. Those not matched can choose to be considered using our application during the regular admissions process, and students admitted this way generally get very generous financial aid offers. Last year, we matched 103 students for the full 4 year scholarship, and over 500 more during regular decision. In total, over $55 Million was awarded to the students who applied through our program last year.

We have other programs as well, namely the College Prep Scholarship which provides mentoring, summer camp tuition, and college conferences. If you'd like you can read more about it on the website at www.questbridge.org. I am really enjoying my job though; everyone in the organization is really outstanding, and I thoroughly encourage you to check out the about the staff page on the website to see the people I'm working with. Also check out the past recipients of the scholarships - the students who have won are phenomenal. There is a cool new website where you can help raise money for a non-profit by searching the internet, called goodsearch.com. I invite you to goodsearch for Quest Scholars (the larger organization), or select your own organization to donate to. Regardless, its a great site, and you should use it and spread the word to others.

So now that I'm working, I've been looking for apartments in San Francisco to move to. I've been there most weekends staying at friends' apartments (or, rather, one apartment that 2 of my college friends rent). So hopefully that will happen soon. I'm sure that between work and living with new people in SF I will have a whole new chapter in my life to embark on. Hopefully there will be plenty of goings ons to have reason to keep posting to the blog.

I put some new pictures online. Here they are: http://picasaweb.google.com/jacob.stiglitz/ (or click the link on the banner above).

Well, I am finally back in the USA, which was not the plan, but at least it gives me a moment to actually sit down and talk about what has been going on. I believe the last thing that I talked about was going to IST (In-Service Training), which was held in the Nukht hotel in the mountains north of UB. Training was a lot of fun and very informative, but it doesn’t feel important to talk about it a lot now, in light of what has happened since.

After IST, just about every volunteer stuck around UB for a few extra days so that we could all spend Christmas together. The party, held on Xmas eve, was held at the same place that we did Thanksgiving, and was, once again, a very good time. A live band (of ex-pats and locals) played and then allowed the PCVs to play on own our afterwards. There, of course, was plenty of good food and wine as well. Towards the end there was a gift exchange, Yankee Swap, because ever Xmas needs a little commercialism. Although most of the PCVs went home on Xmas day or the day after to get back to site as staying longer required using vacation days (of which we get 2 in country and 2 out of country a month, and we can save up as much as we want), most of my better friends stuck around. My friend Rob’s parents and girlfriend were flying in from Atlanta on the 26th, and we all wanted to meet them. Rob’s dad was a PCV in Samoa back in the 60’s, and it was really interesting chatting with him about the similarities and differences in both cultures and the PC program over the years. Rob’s dad became a anthropologist due to his time in the PC, so he obviously had some very clever things to say on these subjects. The holidays had been great so far, but unfortunately, my reason for being home at the moment is made clear soon. On the 28th, two of my friends, Hanna and Hannah, and I got on a train to go to my site where we were all going to spend New Year’s together as my site was in the middle of the 3 and none of us wanted to spend New Year’s Eve alone. However, when we arrived I learned that one of the 10th grade students that I had been teaching was found dead after being missing for 3 days. As you can imagine, we decided to leave town as soon as we learned this information. I spent the next few days, until Jan. 2nd, in Sainshand with my two friends, having no idea about what was going on in Shiveegobi. Mostly, I was worried about the impact of a girl’s being raped and murdered would have a great impact on a town of 2,000. The fact that she was my student made me extremely uncomfortable, and I felt that the incident would affect my teaching. Ultimately, I felt that if I could teach in Shivee, I could teach anywhere, and there was no reason for me not to change my location. My director and I tried to work to change my site. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay at my site, but I also couldn't change locations. In order to move for safety reasons, I had to move some place safer. In Mongolia, safer means smaller. At this time, there are no smaller sites that were available to place me. I fell through the cracks. It is unfortunate that I had to leave before the end of my service, but I left on good terms, with full understanding why it had to be that way. After an extremely emotional day packing up my apartment and saying goodbye to all of the friends that I had made, I went back to UB to begin filling out all the paper work in order for me to leave. It’s amazing how fast information can travel, even in a place like Mongolia: I was receiving text messages and phone calls about me leaving even before the final decision was made. I left on the 12th, and after an evening in Beijing, I was back on American soil, giving big hugs to the folks. Although wonderful to back in the States for various reasons, it is a little strange being back at the same time. The trip was cut short; I was there only about 7 months when I was planning on being there for 27 months. I feel like my Mongolian was finally starting to pick up. I was finally making some good Mongolian friends in UB, and I was finally getting comfortable teaching and working with my English teacher counter-parts in Shivee. Now, I’m at my parent’s house in San Jose contemplating whether or not I want to go back to Mongolia to continue teaching (or doing some other sort of work) on my own, whether I want to reapply for the Peace Corps to do a program somewhere else in the world, or whether I want to get some sort of job in the States. And, of course, if I go back to Mongolia, what will I do, if I rejoin Peace Corps, where will I go, and if I work here, what sort of job will I find? These decisions are never easy, but I feel that this list of options is a little bigger than normal. I’m pretty positive about the whole process though, and I’m sure it will work out for the best. As you know, any decisions will be posted here, and as I always say, hopefully more often than before.

Happy Holidays everyone.

I am in UB at the moment. All the volunteers had to come in last week for training, and most of us decided to extend our stay for a few days in order to celebrate christmas together. On the 24th we had a large PC party at the country director's apartment's common room (same place we had thanksgiving) which was a really nice, really fun party. There was some great food and drinks other than vodka, which is always a pleasant surprise. We played some football outside until it got too dark to play safely, and then there was a band of ex-pats that played for us and then let those of us who could use instruments get up and play as well. We opened presents (the kind where you can swap with someone else or choose a new one) and i got fireworks which I later set off with the Ambassador and the PC Country Director. All in all it was a very fun evening.

Actual Xmas day was pretty low-key. It did snow though, which was nice. It's also snowing now (Xmas in the States).

I don't really have time to write more about my time here in UB now or my time at training, but while I have access to internet, I thought I should write at least a little to wish you all a Happy Chanukkah, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Years!

Once again, been a while, sorry for that. I’ve been pretty busy and haven’t really had time to sit down and write about what I’ve been doing. Seems that I am always either to busy to write about what I’m doing or not busy enough to have anything to write about… funny how that works out.

A few weeks ago was the fall break for the Mongolian schools. My Aimag’s education administration people decided to all go down to Beijing to spend the vacation together. So, 19 of us got on the train at midnight on Thursday/Friday and we started out on our trip. Early morning Friday we got to the border town called Zameen Uud, and I found out that crossing the border is one of the most difficult/annoying things I’ve done here so far. In ZU, we got 3 jeep sized cars to take us and all of our luggage to the border crossing point. Everyone jumps out of the car and runs into the building where they shove and push in attempts to make the process go faster. After about an hour of this, you finally get your leaving Mongolia stamp, at which point you run back to the over crowded car and sit in a 4ish hour long traffic-jam (because the cars are doing their version of pushing and shoving) until you finally get to the Chinese side to do the same thing to get your entering China stamp. Get back in the same car and finally go to the bus stop in Erlian (the Chinese border city) where we wait for the bus which will finally take us to Beijing. (This is the same process on the way back, so I won’t repeat it again later). After picking up some snacks for the bus because we didn’t think we had time to eat lunch before the 3pm take-off time, we finally left at 5pm on our 12 hour bus ride.

The bus ride was pretty uneventful on the way there, as well as pretty uncomfortable for someone my size. However, we finally arrived in Beijing and checked into the second hotel (a Mongolian one) we went to after a little argument at the first one over the number of people we could put in each room. We rested for a few hours, and got in a tour bus and went to see the great wall. This was one of the funnier parts of the trip for me, because seeing the look on people’s faces as they saw me get out of a bus with all of the other Mongolian tourists was priceless. Everybody was so confused as to why an American-looking person would be traveling with Mongolians on a trip to China. Needless to say, I got a lot of pointing, pictures taken, and questions asked of me in a variety of languages (well, mostly Chinese and Russian I suspect).

Now, Beijing is a pretty big place. I don’t know how many miles it is in area, but I do know there are about 18 million people who live there. However, I was able to run into a friend from college that night who is studying abroad there. As Mongolians are not big fans of making plans because they don’t like talking about the future for fear of jinxing it, I wasn’t able to contact my friends at Pomona to see if anyone I knew was studying abroad in Beijing, and if they were, get their contact info. Regardless, at a bar with some of my Mongolian friends that night, I spotted a friend of mine. The next day I decided to hang out with him and 4 of my other buddies rather than doing some of the sights that I had seen on my last trip to Beijing with Semester at Sea. We just hung out at one of their university dorms (which was as nice as any hotel I’ve ever been in) and talked for a couple of hours. After getting some dinner (which was so much better with them than with the Mongolians because they knew how to speak Chinese and order tasty things rather than guessing) we all went bowling. Funny how little things like that can really make a trip great.

The rest of the trip was pretty much just visiting other sights and markets. One of the most interesting things about the trip for me, however, was being with a different culture on a tourist trip. Watching them, how they dealt with the language barrier, how they took in this new culture, etc was very interesting. I felt very uncomfortable at times being with this group I felt was being very rude and insensitive to the Chinese (the Mongolians and Chinese have a pretty bad history and the Mongolians openly dislike the Chinese). They refused to learn any and made fun of the language, they tried to eat as much Mongolian food as possible (Inner-Mongolian food is pretty similar and the language is the same with an accent) and complained when they had to eat Chinese, we stayed at a Mongolian hotel, we had Mongolian guides, most nights they stayed in and drank Mongolian vodka together.

However, upon reflection of the experience, I realize that this must be how most American tourists are. I know that people always say that American tourists are terrible, but I always thought that I and those I’ve traveled with to be exceptions. I realize, however, that if I am being a terrible tourist, I wouldn’t really know because I would be in my comfort zone. Being with the Mongolians, still new to their culture and language, I was able to travel with them while getting an outsiders point of view on the whole thing. My initial response is to think that even if I am a bad tourist, there is no way I could be as bad as them. However, who knows how a Mongolian would feel traveling with an American tourist group after only having lived in America as long as I have lived here. I think it would be equally awkward and interesting for them.

I guess the lesson I am taking from the trip is that it is very important to try to be as sensitive as possible when traveling to another place, someone else’s home. At least learn enough of the do’s and don’t’s, language, and culture to let your hosts know that you are making an attempt to be polite and learn about them. Because, even though it seems impossible to me, I bet the Mongolians thought that they weren’t doing anything wrong, and I bet that each one of us have at one time been doing wrong when we had absolutely no idea that we were doing so.

So after a long trip back, I spent a few days at site and left again for Thanksgiving in UB. All of the volunteers who have been here for a full year already (M16s, I’m an M17) were in UB for shots, and just about every M17 who did not have to fly came in as well for the holiday. It was a really great time, meeting people who I have only heard about and seeing people who I haven’t seen since training. It was a potluck, so most of Thursday was spent getting ingredients, and Friday morning cooking to get ready for the 3pm dinner on Friday. All of the Peace Corps people (and the administration’s families), a few other ex-pats, and the new Ambassador were there. We were even able to get a turkey from China through the State Department. It was a really nice time, although one of the most homesick times I’ve had so far as well. Good thing all those other homesick people were there with me, helping each other to take our minds off of home.

Now I’m back at site, and I will be here for a solid three weeks before going back to UB for a week long In-Service Training (IST). Although I love traveling around and seeing all the other PC people, I do have to admit that it is nice to relax here for a while, concentrate on teaching and thinking of possible secondary projects. IST is where we learn about identifying possible secondary projects, applying for grants, and carrying out these plans. I’m really looking forward to this as the secondary projects part of the deal is the main thing that made Peace Corps so attractive to me.

Other than that, it’s just cold. Its about -20C outside right now. There is a thin layer of snow on the ground from about a week ago, which I’ve been told is probably the last of the snow I will see all winter. -20C is pretty cold for those of you who don’t know, like hurts to breathe kind of cold, however, they tell me that at -40C (which is the coldest it gets, and the temp it will usually be from Jan to Feb) my eyelids will freeze together. Oh boy! If my fingers don’t fall off, I’ll be sure to let you know what its really like when it gets that cold.

Hope all is well and warm(er) for those of you reading this. I know I said this last time as well, but I will try to update more often in the future. Take care, Jacob.

Well, I have been busier than I thought possible here in Mongolia. I should really start writing down just little bits at a time as they happen rather than trying to recap it all at once in one big update, as I am sure I will be forgetting some events that happened.

So, like I said, I’ve been very busy. Several trips to Choyr, UB, hosting visitors here, and traveling out to Sukhbaatar Aimag for a Peace Corps conference. I have traveled into Choyr and UB with my director for various reasons, usually for a night or even for just an afternoon. A trip into UB, although a little over six hours on the train, or about 3 in a car, is pretty easy. I feel like it could be compared to a 2 or so hour trip in America, one where you are willing to go in for just an afternoon, but you wouldn’t want to do it all the time. The trips have been the usual: meeting with different agencies (or not being able to and being very frustrated about the whole process), seeing other PC friends, and eating foods which amaze me in their variety yet would amaze most of you in their lack there of (like chicken, corn, spinach).

I also hosted a little mini-conference here in Shivee. I brought 2 UB volunteers and the volunteer from Choyr here for 2 nights. Three of us are on the trafficking in persons committee, so we talked mostly about getting information onto the train lines to increase awareness and prevention. The other UB volunteer is a CYD (Community Youth Development, whereas I am TEFL-Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteer and he came to talk to my school’s new social worker about teaching the students Life Skills. We also did some fun activities like go out to the mountain and hike around a bit, and we went to a house warming. The UB volunteers don’t get to do as many real Mongolian things because they live in the city which is much less traditional than the rest of the country.

Last weekend I was in Sukhbaatar Aimag, Baruun-Urt Soum (Aimag capital) for a much larger PC seminar on trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and life skills. 18 PCVs along with 11 of our Mongolian counter-parts attended the seminar, and it went really well. PCVs gave presentations on Saturday on the various topics, and the Mongolian counter-parts taught lessons on the material to local students on Sunday and were then given feedback on their lessons. We also had two Halloween parties while we were there, on Friday at the school for the students, and Saturday at an apartment for the volunteers and counter-parts. One of the two volunteers who live in that site, Matt, had written a mass-email home asking for Halloween decorations, and he received 11 boxes full of stuff from various friends. So he had some really great decorations for his apartment and the school. Tons of candy and everything, it was great. (So maybe next Halloween I will do the same thing and try to create a American-like Halloween for my students here….) Everyone did their best to put together a costume. I was a buuz which is a local favorite dumpling. It was a lot of fun seeing M17s that I hadn’t seen since swearing-in and meeting some new M16s. Getting a bunch of Americans together after sending them off to live by themselves in rural Mongolia for a while definitely leads to fun times sharing stories, reconnecting, and partying.

Next week I will be going to Beijing with Govi-Sumber education administration people. I’m very excited to be invited on such a big trip with them, and I am expecting to make some good friends and have a good time. I will be there for a week and will let you all know all about it when I get back. Hope all is well.

I haven’t written for a while. Not so much for a lack of things to write about, there have been plenty. Mostly, I think, because I have been enjoying being slightly disconnected from the world outside of here. I apologize to those of you who show interest in and enjoy reading my accounts of my experiences here for not writing more often. I am sort of lost in two different worlds here: Mongolia and myself. Being in Mongolia is still wonderful, and something new happens every day. However, I am also able to explore the world of myself here, having (large at times) amounts of isolated time where I am forced to reflect on my experience here and myself, having no one else to talk to. Something I never thought I would really do (or want to do), and enjoy it for the most part, even if individual sessions can be a bit lonesome. I don’t think it is possible or would be interesting for me to go into detail about it, but I thought I would mention it to explain why I passed up a few opportunities to communicate with the outside world.

Anyway, I have been here in Shivee for a little over a month now, and boy does it seem like a lot longer than that. Not that that is a bad thing, I enjoy my time here immensely, and have plenty of things to do. It just seems strange that it feels like I have been here for so long when, in fact, it has been a very short amount of time. I feel, at least, like I have been here for as long as I was in Bayangol, but, as you know, I have not. Weird.

I will start from where I left you in my last post, after the trade show. I received a fancy invitation to a dinner with all of the people who helped host the event, which was a very nice dinner at the train station (fresh food!). After the dinner, my director and I took a car into UB, where we stayed for the weekend. I stayed at a hostel which was a great experience for me because I was the guy with all the information about Mongolia there. The people I met were all amazed that I could speak (if only a little) Mongolian and were impressed that I was spending two years out in the Gobi rather than doing their 2 week tourist trip to some sites to get a feel of the country and cross it of the list. I hope I don’t sound like I’m saying that the 2 week tour is a bad thing, I love doing it, and will miss not doing it during my time here (hopefully I can do it next summer for a little while… who’s traveling in SE Asia and wants to let me tag along?). However, I think I will always be slightly jealous for the rest of my life when I meet someone in my position in a country that I am only traveling through. Anyway, I was there to meet Anya’s friend who works for the Open Society to establish a contact there, and to get a little city life out of my system. It was a fun trip, one that I am glad I will be able to do at reasonable intervals.

Another week of work went by fluidly. I decided to start an English class for my class of advanced students and anyone else who they decide to invite. The club will (hopefully) combine fun with some extra English instruction. The plan is to read American books (starting with a ESL version of Tom Sawyer) on Monday, tutor the 4th and 5th grades on Tuesday, play games on Wednesday, do a life skills lesson on Thursday, and watch a movie or learn a song on Friday. Although this is the plan, I am quickly learning that plans aren’t always followed in this country, and less so in the smaller soums. The students also do various other things after school which I usually find out about as they are going on, such as sports tournaments, dances, clean-up projects, etc. Also, my students are the more motivated (reason they are in the most advanced English class) and are most likely to be involved in the other school activities as well. Hopefully we can figure out a fairly reasonable routine though; I would really like to see them read a few classic American books and do the whole life skills curriculum.

Two weeks ago, some members of my class invited me to go along with them and the rest of their class to the (even more than Shivee) countryside with their class. Grades are split up for size reasons and they stay as a group every year and do all classes together (except for my advanced English class which has kids from 10A and 10B). So I went to the countryside with 10B and we had a blast. It was a really beautiful location, with sand dunes and cliffs and herds of animals and even an eagle’s nest. We cooked food, sang songs and played games. We started off with the traditional thing for Mongolians to do in this setting, wrestling: Mongolian, sumo, arm. I brought m Frisbee and showed them how to do that, which they had a lot of fun with. We did some sand dune racing which is either as hard as or harder than you think it is (made me miss the hill we ran up during rugby practice), but was lots of fun running down. Then I taught them capture the flag which we played for maybe two hours. We cooked up some delicious goat for dinner which we had to rush because the clouds were looking to open up anytime. But I had a absolutely great time, and I feel honored that they enjoy me more than just some silly foreigner who moved here for some reason (which I get the feeling other volunteers experience sometimes).

Another week of work went by. On Tuesday we went to a different countryside place called the Rock Mother (I think), which is a little spot for Buddhists to pray. Shivee just switched governors, and there was a picnic to say goodbye to the guy leaving. That Friday I went into Choyr with my director to get my internet fix as well as look up some things on the internet for her. While there I got a call from Peace Corps to come into UB for a consolidation drill (practice for emergency situation) about 10 minutes after the bus for UB left Choyr. So instead of getting there quickly, I took the midnight train which got me to the office about 11 the next day (which is fine though, because under real emergency, I could hire a car to get me there in 3 hours at anytime). This was nice though because it meant I got to stay for the new teacher’s party that we put on for the other teachers. We all sang songs and danced and ate and had a great, funny time. Three other teachers and I got on said train for UB where I met the other volunteer who was coming in on the train line. I asked a train worker where the other American was, but she didn’t know. When I then mentioned that she was Korean, she know immediately who and where she was and brought me right to her. I found it so funny that I could do that. Could you imagine asking where X passenger was sitting on a train in the States? Well, I found her, and we enjoyed some hoshur (fried dumplings) and airag (that wonderful fermented mare’s milk) that we bought at one of the stops on our long ride to the big city.

UB was about like it was last time. A few meetings to set up contacts for future secondary project work (mostly working with Trafficking in Persons this time), and getting my fill of the city life to last me for the next few months. We ate a variety of food not available outside of UB such as Indian, Chinese, and American; I went to a party where everyone spoke English; it was a real treat. I extended my stay until Tuesday afternoon rather than leaving on Sunday in order to meet with some more Trafficking in Persons workers, and then came back to Shivee where I am now writing this note to anyone who happens to be reading this. Speaking of which, a guy put my blog on a website with other PC blogs [hopefully I will remember to add the real information when I actually post this: http://www.PeaceCorpsJournals.com/], so if you are thirsting for reading material more often than I can update this guy, you can check out what some other people have to stay in similar situations. AND, you could even tell me what you think about my experience compared to theirs, as I don’t have the ability to read about them myself. Any other information that you wish to share with me that I can’t read in Newsweek is also appreciated, anytime you wish to share it.

New favorite Mongolian phrase: Saihan Ongoroogoorei (pronounced: sakh’n un-grow’-gore-ā). It means something like “enjoy your visit with soandso,” but more literally, “spend your time with soandso well.”

-I’ll try to include little things like this to make your blog-reading experience more interesting and authentic.

So I feel like I need to write a bit since I haven’t in a while. There haven’t really been any big events. I went to Choyr, the capital of this province, for a teachers’ conference, which wasn’t terribly excited as it was all in Mongolian. There are two volunteers there, one Peace Corps, and one there independently (kind of through his church).

Also, I will be in Choyr when this is sent. I am going in for a Gobi Initiative trade show. Gobi Initiative is a non-profit aimed to help the people of the Gobi to change their lifestyles to become more profitable. There are a lot of events at the trade show, mostly to show off crafts or products that people who have been helped by this organization recently. The other volunteers and I will be teaching English songs and games to kids and computer skills to teachers for two days. Saturday (and possibly Sunday) I will be in UB meeting people from the Asia Foundation and the Mongolian Foundation for Open Society.

Teaching has been fun. It was a little hectic the first week, but it has calmed down considerably. The schedule was constantly changing the first week, making it difficult to know when, who, and where I was teaching. It was all manageable though, I mean after all, speaking English isn’t terribly difficult for me. And, if it wasn’t a little bit crazy, they wouldn’t need me here to help. Now I have a schedule, and am getting to know the classes I will have for the rest of the better. Making longer term plans rather than only concentrating on getting through the current day.

School is a lot of fun. All of the other teachers are very nice including the two other English teachers. Both of them speak pretty good English, which makes life a little easier for me. I’m teaching the most advanced class of English myself, and I’m team teaching 3 other classes the 3 days a week I work. However, just because I only officially teach 4 classes, 3 days a week doesn’t mean that that’s all I teach. I am in the English classes the rest of the time, helping out anyway I can. I also give two different levels of English classes to the teachers (one for beginners and one to the other English teachers).

The kids are great. Every single one stops and says hi, hello, good morning, or how are you to me in the halls, whether it’s the first or 10th time they’ve seen me that day. They all try very hard in class, and are energetic when playing games or studious when learning new words or grammar. I hear whispers of my name when I’m walking to or from school (or the shops); I’ve never been so popular.

-- quick note… in choyr right now. The trade fair is great… Mongolian fashion show, airag drinking contest, etc. lots of fun. Read below, another post with my mailing address and phone number. Take care

The final PST (Pre-Service Training) Days in Darkhan were pretty busy. We had lots of paperwork and other evaluations to do. It was also very stressful, because a lot of information about the next two years of our lives was being given to us then: site placements and supervisor introductions. We also had to practice all of our “acts” for the swearing-in ceremony.

The site announcements and supervisor introductions were both done very well. For site placements, they laid out a huge map of Mongolia and would call out place and name one at a time, and the person would go stand on their site. This is fun, but also helpful because you could see where you were in relation to other people. They called my name out second to last (I was a little worried they had forgotten me), and I couldn’t find my place on the map. After a little help from some Mongolian staff they put me on the right spot at Shiveegovi, not near anyone else whatsoever. For supervisor introductions, the volunteers stood on one side of the auditorium and the supervisors stood on the other side. Ken (PC Mongolia country director) called out the name of the site and the volunteer and supervisor would meet in the middle and everyone would clap. As we are all a little new to Mongolian, there were a few mistakes made, leading to the embarrassment of some and amusement of the other volunteers.

Swearing-In was very entertaining as well. The American ambassador to Mongolia, Ken, and Chimgee (PCM staff in charge of training) all spoke and had some interesting things to say about our service here. Unfortunately the President of Mongolia wasn’t able to speak this year as he did last year. After these people spoke, host communities received a certificate and a donation of books, host families received a certificate (they are big on certificates and medals here in Mongolia), and each volunteer received a certificate proving our status as a full Peace Corps Volunteer to Mongolia. After all these certificates, a few volunteers gave speeches in Mongolian of which I was the first. Then we all danced, sang, and played the Mongolian dances, songs, and instruments that we learned during training. We had some excellent outfits for the dance that we did, I’ll work on getting some pictures for you all to help you understand how great these outfits were. Most acts went fine, and the couple that didn’t were appreciated for their attempt, and everyone was so excited about being done with training at the end of it that no one really cared. Only thing left in Darkhan was saying good-bye to host families for the last time and packing, yet again.

Those of us who weren’t staying in or leaving directly from Darkhan (most of us) went to UB to grab some last minute supplies and catch whatever mode of transportation that we were to be taking to our home for the next two years. Peace Corps has given us about a suitcase worth of stuff since we have been here, plus I have all the stuff I brought from home. Tuesday consisted of getting all this stuff from the dorm room to a car, from the car onto the train, from the train to another car, from the car up to the 4th floor of an apartment building that I will be calling home. It was a pretty painless ordeal because, thankfully, my supervisor’s two kids and a friend made the trip with us and helped me move all the baggage. I spent the rest of the night unpacking and settling in. Oh yea, the apartment is 2 rooms and a bathroom with a hot-water shower (amazing). Each room is about dorm room size, and there is a small balcony to dry clothes on. Pretty simple, but is much bigger and nicer than I expected after being here this long. I have to admit, when its -40C and I am in my heated apartment taking a warm shower, I will not be jealous of the people living in gers.

Shiveegovi is a soum (town) of 3,000 in the aimag (province) of Govisumber, which only totals 13,000 itself. It is southeast of Ulaan Baatar on the train (which is very nice), about 5-6 hours. After the Russians left, miners’ took over the town as their own because there were already the buildings in place. The buildings that they did not need, they mostly tore down for the bricks, etc, to use for things like new buildings and walls. So the town has a very bombed out feel to it because of the building ruins. Other than the few 5 story apartment buildings, the school, a bank/post office/ government/ police building, a few stores, and a few houses and gers on the outskirts there is not much to the town. But I guess what else can you expect from a town of 3,000? I have met a few of the other teachers and they are all very sweet. They came over last night to keep me company and cook for me.

So I guess that things are going to settle down a little. There is a teachers’ conference in the aimag center, Choyr, Monday-Tuesday, and then I begin school on Friday. After that, I will mostly just be teaching, making some new friends, being cold (soon), and doing the whole living in Mongolia thing. I’m sure I will have adventures teaching and dealing with the cold, and I’m sure I will be going on some trips and doing various other activities. We’ll just have to see what happens.

Also, I have a new address and a cell phone that you can reach me at. The cell number is +(976) 9115-4177. If you go online and look for a calling card, you can get them very cheap, rather than spending $7 a minute to just call me regular (or just call my parents and they can tell you how to get a calling card). My address will work in English, but should be written in Cyrillic to ensure that is gets here. However, there is a story that someone sent s PCV a package with “Hrvoje, Mongolia” as the address, and it got to him.

Here it is in English, and I’ll attach a picture of the Cyrillic one somehow.

Jacob Stiglitz

11 Year Secondary School

Shiveegovi Soum

Govisumber Aimag

Mongolia (via China)

Жэкоб стиглиц

11. жил сургуулъ

Шивээговь сум

Говь-сYмбэр аймаг

Монгол (хятадаар)

I’m writing this on my last day of Mongolian classes, and wow has the time really flown by. You’d think that 4 hours of learning Mongolian then 3 hours of teaching or observing English a day would be long, but no. I move out of my host family’s house on Monday morning, a day I am not looking forward to at all. It’s gonna be a sad one.

So, today was the last day of classes as well as the LPI (Language Proficiency Inspection) test. Peace Corps has a ton of acronyms; I feel like PC has it’s own language to learn as well as the host countries. The LPI went fine. It’s really just a test to grade yourself against others objectively, but if you score below a certain level than you are required to get a tutor (beginner mid, which is what I scored in the middle of the summer, and some people scored beginner high – not many people are required to get tutors). However, its not really a stressful day because I am planning on getting a tutor anyway – why not, PC pays for it. Some people are a little stressed out though, which is unfortunate because they are the ones who seem to care about the score the most but you know that the stress will affect them during the test. Oh well. The way I see it, your score on an oral exam after three months of intensive language training can only predict how well you will be able to learn the language over two years out on your own. (edit: 21-beg high, 21-int low, 14-int mid. I got int low, but everyone else in my class got int high, so im guessing I was just having a bad language day because I am not worse than the others in my class. My class was by far the best with scores though)

Also today, between class and the exam, we saw a bunch of white people so we decided to go and talk to them (as we normally do when we see white people – except for in UB, because there were tons of them). Turns out they were a bunch of British guys who were at the tail end of their London – UB, 3 week journey. There are roughly 200 cars that are doing this trek at the moment, using various routes, but all ending up in UB. The trip is a charity called MongolRally. I’m not sure how long it has been going on or who started the program, but all the cars have to be under a certain amount of money (either 100 dollars or pounds, I forget which), and they have to be donated once they get to UB. They also raise money for the trip and then donate it at the end as well. The website was something like mongolrally.co.uk, there are only so many combinations to try I guess. I was thinking maybe someone will buy me a really nice car and I can drive it from UB to London at the end of my service =).

Tomorrow we all go with our host families to Ethan’s family’s countryside spot for a little going away party. It will be really nice to get everyone together with their families and spend a little time together. I’m sure it will end up being some ridiculous story though, and if it does, you will all get to hear about it.

So let’s see… last time I wrote you was in UB, right after finishing practice teaching. Saturday after finishing practice teaching we conducted our community project, which we were to put together as a group in any form that we wanted to. Getting everything organized was pretty much as would be expected, disorganized. At first we wanted to paint a mural on one of the classroom walls, but we didn’t get permission from the school director or funding from PC in time, so we scratched that. However, we did decide to do a variety of other things for the students we had been teaching as well as anyone else who wished to participate.

A few of us had been doing yoga after school for the previous few weeks, and a few students had been doing it with us when they found out we were doing it. So, for the community project day, we held a much larger yoga session, which went over quite well. A few of us led it, and one of the Mongolians who had been participating from the beginning helped explain in Mongolian what we were doing. They had a lot of fun doing the yoga, and Sean, the PCV who lives in Bayangol, decided that he will have a class after school for those who want to show up throughout the school year.

We had two art competitions, one for younger kids and one for older kids. We had a really large turnout for the younger kids competition. We had then use materials they brought or the colored pencils that we supplied to draw a picture of what Mongolia was to them. Most drew pretty similar pictures: hills in the countryside with gers and horses, and the individual members of their family in dels. I don’t think anyone drew UB or naadam, and, more surprisingly, Chingghis Khan. For the older kids, only a few showed up, but those who did drew some pretty outstanding pictures. The winner used watercolors that he brought to draw a bull-rider with an American flag in the background.

Finally, we had a small basketball tournament. There is a small basketball court in the school. The walls are basically the out-of-bounds lines and the goals are about 12 feet high, but we made due. We played 5 on 5 full court, and the 4 teams were the 9th, 10th, 11th grade teams (schools only go up to 11th grade), and us. It was very packed with the spectators on the already small court, but I have a feeling that this is something they might all be used to. I think most of you reading this know how bad I am at basketball, but we gave the 10th graders a run for their turgrigs, losing 10-11 after their 2 point comeback at the very end of the game. The 11th grade team easily cleaned up the whole tournament, beating the 9th graders in the first game, and then the 10th graders in the final game.

After all these events, we hosted a small concert in the cultural center to congratulate the winners as well as practice our “things” for the concert for the swearing-in ceremony. Let me explain this… At swearing-in, we put on a concert that goes on national TV. PCVs go on and play songs they wrote in Mongolia, sing Mongolian songs, dance, play Mongolian instruments, etc. So, I decided to write a speech, get some help translating it into Mongolian, and read that. Also, all 56 of us will be singing one of their national songs (like their version of “America, the Beautiful”). The Wednesday before this community activity day, we went to the cultural center to watch a traditional march/dance. They then asked if anyone would like to learn it. I (with 7 others) volunteered to learn. After going through the routine about 3 or 4 times, they inform us that we aren’t just all messing around, but that we will actually be doing it for swearing in, and we will practice for it on Saturday at the community day party. I don’t have much in terms of previous dance experience, but they decided that I was the one who needs to have the front and center spotlight routine with the Mongolian who was teaching us (who won’t be with me on TV). When we showed up on Thursday at 5 to practice again for the weekend, they throw these lovely dresses on the 4 guys, and some tops and skirts on the girls (the girls were quite upset with the way the outfits fit them, much more upset than I will go into detail here). We do it once, and then they inform us that we will be doing it for a community concert that night. We have maybe done the full thing 5 times, all of us have to watch the Mongolians to know what we are supposed to be doing, and we are on in front of everyone in a little over an hour. And I have a lovely “solo” (I call it that because what I’m doing is not anything like what my Mongolian buddy is doing), with a couple side leg kicks and spins. Well, when the time came, we went out there, and many of us gave our first dance performance. It ended up being recognizable, and the community was more entertained than they ever could have been if we did this thing correctly.

Back to our concert on Saturday evening. We hadn’t practiced again since the surprise concert a few days before, but we went through it once, and actually did much better than we did before. Rob recited a famous Mongolian poem, and Andy played a three-stringed Mongolian instrument called a shans. We also had Eric come up and sing a song that he wrote about Mongolia with some cleverly placed Mongolian words (it’s called “Zugeer, Mongolia” which means, “It’s OK, Mongolia”), including a shans solo by Andy. We gave some prizes to the winning artists and basketball team, sing a song, and said thank you to the community for hosting us for the summer. Afterwards, we put on a couple popular songs and danced for a little while. It was a good end to a good day.

Here is a photo of me with my family. I am going to try to upload some more pictures, but when I tried to do a bunch at once it wouldn't let me. So at least you will be able to see this one.

So before I write about Amarbayasgalant, I just wanted to let you all know that I am in UB right now for 3 days getting familiar with the city. We finished up practice teaching on Friday, and had a community activity day which was a lot of fun and will write about next week and publish to the blog when I get to darkhan next week. Tues to Sat I will be in Bayangol, but I move out on Sat, go to Darkhan for a few days and then will leave for my permanent site. I find out where I'll be going the first day in Darkhan, and I am very excited for this. So yea, the summer is basically wrapped up and I will be a full Peace Corps Volunteer in just a few days. Depending on where they are sending me, I will either be talking to you a lot more or a lot less than I get to now. Let's all hope for more. Now about my Amarbayasgalant trip...

Amarbayasgalant and Adventure

Amarbayasgalant is one of the most beautiful and well preserved monasteries in Mongolia. Buddhism was once extremely prevalent in Mongolia, but during and since the Soviet occupancy, the numbers of devout followers and monks has dwindled. However, Buddhist traditions are still widespread, and many Mongolians practice infrequently. For example, my house has a small shrine in my room. There are several offerings on the shelf, such as a picture of a Buddhist scene with a prayer cloth wrapped around it, a tea pot, my sister’s diploma, a bunch of prayers in a bag. There is also some incense, vodka, snuff, and candles; these seem to be not as much offerings but rather items that they use that could be used as offerings and are simply placed on the shelf for that reason. There is also a prayer wheel that they turn roughly once a day. The prayer wheel contains prayers that are supposed to be activated with motion, which is also why they put prayer clothes on top of mountains or other windy areas. They spin it for various reasons: I have seen them spin the wheel for prayer’s sake but they have also gotten up and spun the wheel during an intense card game, hoping for a good hand next round. So, although they do practice this one Buddhist ritual, I would by no means call them religious people, and I think most people around are the same way. I also believe that the situation is similar to America, where the further into the country you get the more religious the people are, and the urban people are less religious.

So, Amarbayasgalant is one of what used to be hundreds of monasteries throughout Mongolia. However, the Russians destroyed most of them when they occupied the country, but fortunately left most of this one intact. We decided to go Sunday, the 31st, because a very famous llama was going to be there, the highest after the dalai llama. 10 of the 11 of us went, along with the driver (who was the host father of the PCV who left), his son and a friend, our two Mongolian teachers, and one of their husbands. Luckily, we went in a Mikr and a car, although it would not have surprised anyone if we all fit into the Mikr, as that’s kind of how they do things here. We left at 6 in the morning Mongol time, or about 6:45, and after stopping for a quick breakfast, we got there at about 10:30. The architecture is beautiful: many stupas, Buddhas, player cloths, prayer wheels, other decorations. There were also many tourists because of the llama’s being there. As we got there the llama was leaving in a helicopter; everyone was crowded around it bowing out of respect.

We walked around the monastery for a while, but I will spare you all my attempt to use descriptive language and instead recommend that you spend a minute looking through pictures of a few of them online to get the idea of what it would look like. The highlight, however, was the birthstone which you are supposed to crawl through and be reborn. Its funny because it’s a tight fit, and everyone laughs at the people struggling to get through. You are supposed to crawl into it, look though a small hole at a sun statue, spin around three times and then crawl out the other side. Well, I am a little bit taller than your average visitor to this location, and I had a bit of trouble with the whole process. I could not physically spin around in the thing three times, so I decided to just crawl out, but that didn’t prove to be too easy either. I was in the thing long enough for the other volunteers to ask me if I was alright in there and if I needed any help. I eventually wormed my way out, to be caught on video and cheered on by the crowd of people watching the silly Americans try to be Mongolian. Fun stuff.

After the monastery and a lunch of xiam and rice, we went to a natural spring in the area. It is supposed to bring good luck so there were a lot of people there filling water bottles or just putting some on their head. We stayed there for a couple hours picking some tiny little Mongolian strawberries and being frustrated with how many more berries the Mongolians with us could find them than we could. But it was a lot of fun being out in the sun in a field picking berries in Mongolia… you know, not something that you would expect me to be doing normally. Afterwards we went down to a river. Three of us decided to get down to our underwear to be able to cross, and the others stayed behind and just hung out. On the other side were some more stupas that we visited, 8 all connected together, 2 separated, and 1 way up on a hill above. Very beautiful: very much worth the extremely cold water and underwear crossing. On the way back we were stopped by some vacationing Mongols to have some tea and candy. We stayed briefly to be polite, talked a bit about the differences between America, Mongolia, and Russia, and we went on our way. More and more I am realizing that the hospitality that I read about before coming here is in fact the case. And when you add the fact that we are Americans, we will always have someone taking us in to feed us or give us tea, which is a really nice way to spend two years.

The road to Amarbayasgalant is about 30 km of dirt road off of a paved road that is about an hour to Darkhan. About half a km from the paved road, we heard something that you don’t want to hear while riding in a car in Mongolia. The car that was luckily with us towed us to the street, and when we all got out, the back left wheel was on fire (in the inside, I’m not good with cars so I don’t know exactly what was wrong). After taking off the wheel and axel and realizing that this wasn’t a problem that we could fix immediately, the car left with the driver to get some parts. So make a long story short- the mosquitoes were extremely bad. There was some miscommunication, so one of our Mongolian teachers left by herself in a car and went home to Bayangol, rather than stopping to try to get us another car in the next town. After about 4 hours we decided to try to get rides ourselves, and send 4 volunteers in a Mikr to Darkhan to get a hotel, and we were going to follow as we found cars. Unfortunately, finding cars after 11 is harder than during the day, so we didn’t have any luck getting cars. As we decided that the next car was going to be the last and we would try to go to sleep after it past, it turned out to be the car that we were with, back from getting parts from Bayangol. So at 2 in the morning, they spent about an hour fixing this Mikr which is something I am pretty confident saying that an American mechanic would take a week and $1,000 dollars fixing. So, we drove to Darkhan, picked up the people in the hotel there and got home by 6. All in all, not terrible from our first Mongolia breakdown story. I’m sure you will here of many more over the next two years from me. Volunteers I have talked to have been able to tell a few each, after having been here only a year, and I doubt my luck will be any better. Life got back to normal later that day though. We missed language class in the morning, but still made practice teaching in the afternoon. Just another road trip.

This and the previous post were both written about a month ago. I hadn't found a computer that would let me conect my camera to it to let me get the files off. In UB, however, anything is possible.

So I thought I would write about a regular day during my life here as a trainee.

I wake up at 8am every morning to the sound of static on my shortwave radio. I tried turning it to a station at night for a while until I realized that I will never get reception on the same station in the morning as I did at night. I supposed that a soft static is better than the terrible beeping of an alarm going off though, so I can’t complain. After folding my blanket and sheets, brushing my teeth, and dressing, I eat the breakfast that my host mother has prepared for me. It is usually cash (a sort of grits-y meal that isn’t bad in small quantities, but is served in large) or some mini-pancakes thingy. Sometimes I get eggs (fried in oil) or some rice and xiam (kinda like a hotdog). This is always served with some very hot suu-tai stea (salted milk tea) which I can already see myself not being able to live without. I am also slowly developing calluses in my mouth from the heat, and hopefully I will be able to drink it as fast as they can soon, although doubtful. I fill my water bottles with the water that has distilled over night, and pack my backpack with the materials I’ll need for the day. I say bye and walk about 5 minutes to school across a field with some cows grazing, avoiding the variety of patties. There are a couple of cute calves that are usually around playing that I like to watch during the short walk.

There are 11 of us total here in Bayangol, and we are split into groups: 5 in ours and 6 in the other. We started with 6 too, but our group boasts the only group to have had a volunteer who decided to leave (he did on the second week of training). We begin class with some questions about the day before, and we use this time to share anything bizarre that may have happened the night before and learn the vocabulary for it from our teacher (Enxhee). We have class until about 10:45 when we have just about reached our limit of things we can learn, and then have a half hour break, which the teachers have recently been interrupting, making us explain to them what we are talking about in Mongolian. After about half an hour of break, we head back to the classroom and learn some more Mongolian until 1. I got home for lunch, which is usually just being finished by my sister or mom. Lunch and dinner are similar meals, always consisting of goat meat, carrots, and onion. This is put in with either rice, noodles, or a sort of noodle homemade out of flower (my personal favorite). This can either be cooked up as is or water can be added to make a soup (which they have been making less, either cause they have noticed that I like it less or because it’s warmer out). There are also three sizes of dumplings that they make, which they can either steam or fry, and these can be eaten normally or added to the soup or suu-tai stea. I always try to help when making the dumplings, but still haven’t gotten the art down. They’ll laugh at me and try to show me again how to pinch them correctly, and then continue to make them at lightening speed while I slowly make one poorly. Its fun though, and I’m getting better, and I mean they are still edible, just not pretty.

After lunch we’ll clean up, and practice what I learned with whoever is home. I’ll usually have something to do in the afternoon at 3: previously it was TEFL training and cultural classes, and from now on its going to be practice teaching (I’ll have my own class). Days that I have nothing to do in the afternoon are usually when I write these things or just laze around, read, watch a movie, or play Mongolian games with the family. I feel like after two years I’ll be pretty damn good at the language, cooking, etc, but the games are something that I will never master, especially shaghai. But when I get back to the States, I’m excited to show you all how to play these games and beat you all as bad as they beat me!

Post-afternoon activity, I am called for dinner at about the time that I really start wishing that they would call me for dinner. On nice days we eat outside, if not, we eat in the kitchen or in the galthsoozh (a kind of half inside half outside room where they do the cooking- the kitchen is a normal kitchen, but I guess they only cook there in the winter). Dinner is usually served with regular tea, and lunch can be with either tea. After dinner and cleaning up, we mostly spend the rest of the evening playing volleyball outside and talking with guests. Lots of guests here… friends and family just stop by for a short while, drink some tea, share gossip/news, and go on their way. I’m not really sure if they purposefully stop by here, or if they just kind of walk around and stop by if they are in the mood to. Either way, it provides me with more Mongolian language practice and some more difficult names to try to remember. These activities will continue on until about 11, when it finally gets dark outside and the mosquitoes come out. If it’s raining out, I’ll usually watch a movie with my siblings and give up trying to explain what is going on after about 15 minutes. I’ll then do homework for language and prepare a lesson for the next day. I fill my distiller with water to be ready for me in the morning and try to be in bed by 12 or 1 at the latest, to be ready for a very similar day to come.

Although I have a very regular routine, every day ends of very different from each other. Some times language is boring, or sometimes we play games or learn songs. Some afternoon sessions boring and filled with paperwork, but sometimes we’ll go on a walk around the community or meet a government official. Sometimes we don’t have them, and we go to the river to skip stones, or we climb one of the many hills. Sometimes I cook, and sometimes I’d prefer a piece of bread to what they are giving me. Sometimes I just watch a movie and sleep, sometimes we have a volleyball tournament, and sometimes there is a local show with singing and dancing for us to watch. I’ve gone over to other trainees house and see how different their routines are, and they’ve come over here (I think they secretly wish they didn’t have to leave). Usually though, the days fly by a lot faster than I would expect them to, and I find myself getting ready for bed in a good mood, ready for what tomorrow will bring.

Well, I guess its not really a farm in the American sense of the word. A large number of people here own live stock, and its no surprise to see pigs, cows, goats, sheep, etc walking around. However, yesterday (Friday the 14th) I went with my family out to the xodoo (countryside). We took the 3pm train that left at 4 and got there about 3 stops and an hour later. The train was pretty normal. The only weird part was that it seemed that people were really pushy to get on and attempt to get their own seat (still normal), but then once they got stuck sitting with strangers, they were very friendly right away. Not really the polite airplane conversation that we are all used to, but a school/work acquaintance type conversation. I guess I just found it amusing that they would push each other around to try to not have to sit and talk with someone they didn’t know but then end up enjoying their time with their seat-mate.

Anyway… we got to the countryside, and my dad’s sister’s husband and son met us at the train. We walked/rode horses about half a mile until we got to a small river that we had to cross on the horses, so we took turns crossing. The water was deep enough to almost covered the horse’s back, so we all got soaked; it was great. When we got to their gers, we did a little bit of greeting, and then moved right on to eating. Over the coarse of the night we cooked up two sheep and a goat, all of which we killed right there. There were a couple of other things available, like a potato or two, cooked in the same pot as the meat, but basically it was all meat and all delicious. We spent the time in between animals singing Mongolian songs and dancing to rock music on the car radio.

We went back to the river to swim, but it turns out the Mongols find the river very dangerous and don’t like swimming in it. So we had a little water fight, and left it at that. We did some cow milking and some other farm things, and then went back to eating, singing and dancing. It really was a great day/night, and I hope I get to make it back out to the xodoo again with my family.

So I have been here in Bayangol for a little over two weeks now. I am having a really great time being a member of this family. I am getting used to living with a lot less than I have become accustomed to, which is really amazing seeing as I have only been here such a short time. My family is lots of fun. My parents don’t act any older than my siblings who are 11, 20, and 22. They have some disco lights in my room, so I’ll turn on music some nights and well all dance in my room. When we play games (either with cards or ankle bones from sheep) there is always some sort of cheating going on, and I’m sure that they change the rules on me since I don’t really understand the actual rules yet and always just take their word for it. I only know one card game, and it is pretty simple in theory, but I still haven’t won a single hand. Sheep ankle bones are used in any variety of ways called Shagai (I know of four varieties). There are 4 sides of the ankle, and they are called the sheep, horse, camel, and goat. In the most popular form, about 80-100 of these bones are thrown on the ground and you try to flick a bone at another one of the same type. If you hit it without hitting any other bone, then you pick up one of them and repeat. Once the last pair hits, everyone expect the flick-er puts in two, and this continues until only one person has all the pieces. Games can take a while depending on the skill level of the players (which is very high for Monglians, and very low for us Americans… they seem to be able to get about 10 pieces before I am able to find two pieces that are the same). The extended family lives close by and are always stopping by to eat, play, or just chat. I am having a terrible time keeping track of all of the names since there are first of all so many of them and secondly in a foreign language. There are a bunch of toddlers which are very cute but annoying since their Monglian is better than mine which is never a fun thing to think about. My Monglian is getting better though, but language reception is better than my production. They treat kids a little differently here. I feel like they just let them be and learn on their own, whereas in America we baby them. I feel that parents might be a little weirded out by the parenting style here, but as a non-parent it makes quite a bit of sense. They babies are very cute though, with huge heads and wide eyes that stare at me wondering why I look so different and don’t understand them when they talk. Wednesday and Thursday of this week are my soum’s Naadam, which is a festival where they do the wrestling, archery, and horse racing. There is also lots of singing, dancing, contortion-ing, and general celebrating. Next month is the big Naadam in UB, and it’s the 800th, so its going to be a really big deal. They are doing a lot to prepare for it, but in traditional Monglian style, they didn’t start preparing until a few months ago. There had been tons of stuff about in on TV, and you can tell that the whole country is buzzing because of it. By the way, my house has 2 TVs (one black and white) with 3 channels. No running water, but we get around that pretty easily. We have a refrigerator and stove, but we don’t use the stove, but rather a electric cooking pot for everything. It’s amazing how many different things you can make from the same 6 ingredients. I can only think of a very few things that aren’t very appealing to eat, and they aren’t eaten very often, and usually aren’t prepared for a full meal. A few deserts and side dishes aren’t great, and if you don’t like mayo then there are a few more things that you won’t like, but there should never be a problem getting full in this country, even for vegetarians (there are plenty of them in Peace Corps, and that’s why I know that). We have a tank hanging up in the air for showering (but we just set it up last week, before then I used the bathhouse). People don’t shower much here, but they don’t smell bad like some of the Europeans that I have encountered. They usually bathe once a week, and wash their face and feet about every other day. About money here: the bathhouse is $.50. A ride to Darkhan (maybe about 80km) is $5 round trip per person, and a ride around the city is $.20. I got a shirt, hat, and sandals for $10. A meal at a restaurant (which they don’t have in Bayangol) is $2, a beer is $1.50 or you can get a bottle of vodka for $6 ($2 at a store). An ice-cream is $.20, but make sure you get the unsalted kind. There really aren’t a lot of things to buy, and I haven’t done much food shopping, but I would assume you can get a weeks worth (for one person) for $10-15. Speaking of alcohol, the drinking culture is no where as bad as I thought it would be coming here. Yeah there are drunks, but where aren’t there. There might be more in UB, but once again, what city can you go to where there aren’t drunk people that you need to avoid. I also don’t get much unwanted attention at all, but rather kind of celebrity attention. The little kids can’t get enough of any of us, and we play volleyball (no net, just hitting around) for hours at a time. I haven’t ridden a horse yet, but I’m sure I’ll get a chance to soon enough. Lots of people get around on horse; few people own cars except for people who drive for a living. I guess I would say there is someone on horseback for every person who rides a bike. I’m sure there will be much more once I get out to the countryside. I’ll write more after Naadam, and try to get this post up before I have 4 more written like last time. OK, its now after Naadam. Naadam was a lot of fun. We had class until 11 on Wednesday, and then we headed over to where Naadam was being held. There were basically three areas: where the horse race finished, an area where you could buy food or little toys, and the wrestling area. I spent most of my time watching wrestling. The adults being wrestling on Wednesday, and finished on Thurs, and the kids and teens started and finished on Thurs. The wrestling was a lot of fun to watch, you should check out their outfits on google because I’m not the best at descriptive writing, but basically a small underwear bottom and a chest-less shirt. The story behind the shirt is that a woman won the event easier one time in the past and no one could tell because of her outfit, and to prevent this in the future they created the shirt they use today. The wrestlers first do an eagle dance, and then pair up to wrestle. The goal is to simply get your opponents body to the ground, kind of like sumo. The winner then soars over the loser (like an eagle) and advances to the next round. I found out on Thursday that I would have been able to wrestle if I had signed up on Thursday, oh well. The horse racing is done by the age of the horses, and as far as I can tell are all 25km. When someone spots the dust could coming over the mountains, everyone runs over from wherever they are over to where the finish line is. The riders are young little boys and girl, in attempt to test the skill of the horses rather than that of the riders. It is awesome to see the little kids in brightly colored shirt bouncing bareback to the finish line after riding for 25 km. It is good luck to touch the winning horse and wipe its sweat on your forehead and hair. For the final race, we chased the winning horse down in a car so that we could all touch it and bring ourselves good luck in the year to come. As for the food part, I took it upon myself to eat as many hoshuur as possible. Hoshuur are kinda like pancakes with meat in the middle. They are also made to be like fried dumplings. They cost about $.15 per one, and 5-8 will get you full. I ate about 50 I think, which was 51 short of my goal. I picked 100 because one of the volunteers who has been here for a year told me that he ate 100 last year, although he does have about 75 pounds on me. I also had my first taste of airag, the fermented mare’s milk, there. It really doesn’t taste that bad, especially if you add in a little sugar. I was sitting in a tent with a lot of the town big-shots, and they kept giving me big bowls of the stuff, I guess a combination of me being big and a newcomer. It must be only about 2-3% alcohol because even after drinking that much I couldn’t feel the alcohol at all (and it wasn’t just me, the other trainees agreed). All it did really was taste good, and violently disturb my stomach this morning (Friday). I will be in Darkhan from Monday until Wednewday for Mid-Center Days, and will have a few opportunities to do some comunticating with the outside world which should be fun. It will also be fun to be in a large group again and here stories from other places that I haven’t heard about yet. Send me some emails and write some comments on these posts so I can see what you think or write about something that I haven’t yet. -We got a new dog today, a cute little black guy (not good with breeds). I named him Kanga, after kangaroo, because the other dogs name is Dingo. I think they were implying that it is my dog (communication is always a funny thing, getting in situations I don’t know I’m getting into, or simply not knowing how to get out of situations I know I’m in). If it is mine, I wonder if they are expecting me to take it to site with me, and what the logistics of that would be. I think it would be fun, to have a dog of my own to have as a pet rather than just a guard dog (which aren’t treated as pets). If I find out it is mine, good luck figuring out the paper work to get it back to the states for me mama.

I’ve been with the host family for less than a week now and I already feel as comfortable as if I were in my own home. So Mom, you don’t have to worry, they are taking good care of me. Last night my other two siblings came home from UB. Sarachimeg just graduated with a degree in sociology of education, and I don’t know what Munchbaatar was doing there, maybe just hanging out with his older sister. Communication is already getting a little easier, and I’m really hoping that by the end of next week I’ll be able to have decent conversations with them. Even without being able to talk with them, we are all having a good time with each other. We go outside and play volleyball or toss the Frisbee around. They love the light-up Frisbee that I brought with me that we can throw around at night. After that, they put on the disco lights and I put on some hip-hop and we danced and took pictures. I called it disco Tumurbaatar after the dad. They absolutely love taking pictures and like looking at them afterwards even more. Today is Saturday, the first day that I don’t have language classes in the morning, and the first day that the whole family is all together. If I understand correctly, we are going to spend the day driving around the mountains and then go to the river (Gol of Bayangol, Bayan means rich). We are surrounded by mountains where I am, it is absolutely beautiful. One of the mountains is a holy mountain, which apparently means that men must have a purpose to climb it and women a purpose to walk around it (they aren’t allowed to climb to the peak). There are three different types of holy mountains in Mongolia, and they are named according to what type they are. There is one mountain that is the holiest near UB, and it has all three names. Tonight, a couple of Peace Corps friends from a different town are coming in to visit one of my friend’s birthday who is here in Bayangol with me. It will be fun to see them, not only to see them, but also to see what life is like for them. We are in one of the biggest soums with 5,200, but they get as small as about 400. I’m sure we will have opportunities to travel to some of the other soums, but for now I have no idea what life here is like except for here and in Darkhan. By the way, its hot here, maybe around 85-90. It’s a real dry heat, so you don’t sweat much, but it adds up when you don’t shower for 3-4 days at a time. It stays light out until about 11 at night, and there has been a full sky of stars just about every night. I have still yet to ride a horse, but I think that is coming soon. Let’s hope. Oh, and yesterday I had grits and innards for breakfast. Blood sausage, heart, liver, and who knows what else… all from the sheep that we killed the night before. Mongolians kill sheep by making a small incision in the chest and then reaching inside and disconnecting the aorta. After the sheep dies (pretty peacefully actually) they skin it (also very cool to watch how they do it) and take out everything edible (some of which I ate for breakfast). None of my friends here have had any of this kind of experience with their host families (eating sheep’s head or killing), so we are trying to figure out if my dad is just a badass or if the other families are avoiding it because they have heard Americans are squeamish. I know a volunteer last year, who was vegetarian before he got here, actually killed a sheep himself when his family went on a picnic one weekend. So who knows what we have in store for us. For the time being though, I’m just concentrating on getting my Mongolian as good as possible so I can talk with this wonderful family who has been doing so much for me. Off to the mountains!

Sain bain uu (San bano) from Bayangol! So, the cheek meat is the best for the next time those of you decide to eat goat face, but lets talk about that when the time comes. Since I last wrote, I have spent two nights in a ger camp, four nights in Darkhan, and I am about to spend my second night in Bayangol. The ger camp is supposedly the nicest in Mongolia. Its where President Bush and the rest of the important Americans who have been to Mongolia within the last year (which is a lot more than you’d expect) come to see what a ger camp looks like. They treated us real well, and it allowed us to see what living in a ger will be like, minus the doing the work for yourself (ie., they fed us, lit our fires, had toilets and running water, etc). It was in a really nice area between the airport and Ulaan Baatar (UB). After two nights in the ger camp, we left for Darkhan, where we began orientation. Darkhan is the second largest city in Mongolia with the impressive population of 70,000. Darkhan is where we learned our survival Mongolian language and culture as well as got some shots and learned some other information such as what to do if things go wrong. We learned about gardening, cooking, teaching, communication, and everything else fun that will be going on. We also met our support staff and some current volunteers who we were able to ask questions about what life is going to be like. The fact that they are all alive gives me some hope that I will also be in a year. After a few days there, we split up into smaller groups and headed for our host families. I got sent to Bayangol, a town of 5,200 between UB and Darkhan. I was greated by my host mother and father, Tumurbaatar and Urjinsuren. I have yet to meet my 3 siblings, Saranchimeg, Khurelbaatar, and Munkhbaatar, because they are on vacation in UB for the time being. I cant really understand when they are coming back, either on Friday, or they left on Friday… communication is a difficult thing around here. After exhausting all of my Mongolian phrases, and got tired of playing charades and pointing to words in my phrasebook, my dad brought me outside and told me to sit by the stove. He walks away, and come back carrying two sheep’s heads, with a big old smile on his face. We spend the next two hours singeing all the hair off of the head with hot metal rods. After getting every last hair off, we tear away the jaw, split it, and throw the whole thing in the boiler. An hour later, I’m slicing off different pieces of face meat to chew on. The skin is my least favorite part, followed by pure fat, and then tongue. Once you get to jaw, eyeball, and cheek, it actually starts to get good. Once all the goodies were gone, we threw the rest in the pot, and boiled it up to make whatever we were going to have for dinner. Mongolian life is pretty cool. The shitting situation isn’t the best (a floor board missing over a hole), but everything else is simple and frankly, pretty nice. People come and go as they choose, they only say hello once a day at the max, and they find it hilarious that I say hello every time I walk in the room. Goodbye is the same way, which still leaves me wondering where people have gone. They slurp their tea (lemon or milk) and soup, they spit out fat if they aren’t the type who eats it, and fart when they feel necessary. The food is surprisingly good, although I either have a different taste in food or the other moms aren’t as blessed as my mom. The other 11 that are in my Soum (village) don’t mind the food, but they also aren’t raving about it like I am either. All the people in the village are excited to see us and wave when we walk by. We have a one eyed guard dog named Dingo, and although tiny, he gets the job done when cows or pigs come into the hasha (yard). I’ve been spending the time that I’m not in language class talking to little kids and playing basketball on 9 foot goals, which as you can imagine is great for me. All in all, I am quite happy here, and am excited about my next 3 months here. I’ll try to keep everyone updated as much as possible, but I don’t know how often I’ll be somewhere with internet or how often something notable will happen worth writing about. My group is in the process of making a group blog, however, to put pictures and funny stories on, and I will let you all know what the site is once it is up and running. Also, I am going to get a SIM card here, and when I do, anyone will be able to call me if they want to. I’ll get that number to you as soon as possible. Hope all is well wherever you are reading this.

Staging-

This is the second post of the day, so make sure you read the one below this first. Most of this was just taken from the email that I'm assuming you received (how else would you know about this website?).

I am sitting on a plane currently, en route to Korea. 57 of us to-be volunteers are on the flight as well, and there is a steady buzz of excitement about being in Mongolia soon. After a two hour layover in Seoul, we will be on a 3.5 hour flight to Ulaan Baator. We will be spending two days there, and hopefully I will be able to send this email out to you all from there somewhere. After the two days there, we will be travelling to a smaller city about 4 hours away to being training. They told us that communication will be infrequent at best, but please continue to write me or even each other through this list even if it takes me a while to respond. I will get all the emails eventually, and Ill have plenty of time to respond to them before the next time I get computer access.

So I arrived in LA two days ago after a busy day of packing after two weeks of rugby tour in Argentina. Although doing all this in such a short period of time before Peace Corps staging made things a little stressful, I am very glad I did so that I didn't have the idle time to start worrying about what the 27 of life ahead of me is going to be like. The two days in LA were a lot of fun. I have really never felt so comfortable with such a large group of strangers so quickly. We obviously have a lot in common and a lot to gain by being nice and friendly to each other, and this combination made the two days very fun and interesting. It was quite strange however, to be in such a large gathering and not run into 33% Jews and 50% Californians. The number of people from non-coast States really surprised me as well: Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, etc are all represented much greater than one would imagine.

Staging was really just a welcome to the Peace Corps and an introduction to our fellow volunteers. There was not much Mongolia specific information shared, however there was someone there who knew about Mongolia who filled us in on a little information when it was applicable. It was mostly talking about effective volunteering methods, safety infomation, policy, and other broad topics. I am very glad that staging occured though, because I might have been getting a little nervous if I was sitting on this flight alone. Speaking of the flight, Korean Air is a very friendly airline. The food has been excellent, I have my own TV screen from which I can choose from maybe 25 movies among other things to watch, there is WiFi available for a smaller fee than on Semester at Sea ($10 an hour or $27 for the whole flight, but I'm not getting it becuase it would be too much of a hastle to find my card at the moment). They also took my 80 pound bag and didnt charge me for it!

Next time I post to this I will be able to write all about Mongolia and UB and everything else that I have been anxiously awaiting since I found out I was going to Mongolia a few months ago. Horses, horse milk, mutton, wrestling, archery, steppes!!! Oh Man!

School, Spring Break, Graduation, and Rugby Tour

So, been quite a while since I updated this thing.... Even though I am writing them all at the same time, I'm going to write a few different entries that will probably all be posted at the same time. I'm just doing it to keep the length of them down.

This entry will be pre-Peace Corps. I think the last thing I posted was finishing up living in Prague for the summer. If I didn't talk about my running with the bulls and Slovenia/Croatia trip, I will do so later (but I think I did). Senior year was fine, and nothing too big really stands out to me. I did my senior thesis on language and thought, a pretty interesting topic which I hope to continue doing some research on while in Mongolia. I started playing rugby this year and really enjoyed it while I was uninjured and able to play. A injured shoulder has kept me from playing second semester, but I've gotten really good at being a fan. One nice thing about rugby is that its a sport that you can continue playing when you are older, so I hope to play again in the future (maybe they'll even have it in UB).

For Spring Break, Rob Joe Isaac and I went to Costa Rica which was definately the correct thing to do. We rented a car and just Dihatsu'ed our way around the country. We visited some great mountains, volcanos, reserves, and beaches. We hiked, walked, swam, relaxed, and partied to the fullest every day. The sun was always shining, the food was delicious and cheap, and the people were friendly. We decided that most of the country were professional "chillers" that simply have the time to relax and chat with anyone who comes by and wants to talk with them. We spent 10 days there and had a blast.

My Birthday, May 1st, was also my last day of college. A few days later, as is tradition, all of the seniors travelled down to Mission Beach, San Diego, where we all have houses rented for what is called Senior Week. Seniors either don't have to take finals or they take them early, but then we all get off campus and celebrate down in San Diego so that we don't bother all of the other students who do have to take those finals. 10 of us rented the house that sleeps 8 together, but as always, underclassmen come in droves to see us off on the days that they don't have finals. On the most crowded day I believe we had about 18 people sleeping in the house. It was a fun week though, and it was nice to be able to celebrate our completion of college on such a nice beach with everyone.

May 14th, I graduated! The weekend was busy with entertaining and packing, but it ended up being a delight. I met all of my friends families and families met other families and everyone enjoyed each other's company. Graduation itself was a little boring, as most graduations are, but the feeling I got walking across that stage was unforgettable.

The next morning (15th) I left with the rugby team for Argentina. We had a very busy itinerary, but it was all worth it. We flew to Buenos Aires through Atlanta, and arrived on the morning of the 16th, we immediately headed off for Montevideo, Uruguay. A beautiful city sitting right on the water. After a nice city tour and a lost rugby game blamed on the lack of sleep due to travelling, we headed back to BA for a few days. BA is a huge city with tons to do. The beautiful people of Argentina like to party until dawn, and who are we to not do what the Romans do. The tour also took us to Cordoba and Mendoza. Everywhere we went had a rich history and a very different feel to it difficult to describe in such a short space as here. In rugby news, we won in BA and Cordoba in some really outstanding rugby matches, but were beat in Mendoza. Unfortunately, I had to leave the team ealry to make it back to make it to Peace Corps on time, but I still had a great time down there with the team. Cheers!

I left Mendoza on the 30th on a 16 hour overnight bus. After a day at the airport rather then hike around the city with a huge pack on my back for a few extra hours, I got on an overnight flight to Altanta. From Atlanta to LA, and finally from LA to San Jose arriving on the 31st. The 1st was spend doing last minute shopping and packing, and at 9.30am on the 2nd I was on a plane back to LA to begin PC staging. Although I believe it is currently the 5th because of the date-line, the 57 of us boarded a flight on the 4th from LA to Seoul, Korea, and from Seoul we will be flying to Ulaan Baator, or final flight destination. In two days we will be boarding a bus to being training for the next several weeks, and then finally all of this travel will come to an end. Its worth every minute of it though, and I can't wait to step foot in Mongolia!

everything has been wonderful so far here in europe. i started off with a week in germany and austria visiting college friends studying abroad and the old exchange students. when i got to prague i started my tefl course right away. all of the other students were great, from the states and GB and 21 to 28 years old. we all got along really well, and i thoroughly enjoyed the course. teaching is a very fun and rewarding thing, and im glad that i decided to do it. i finished the course up last friday, so i am now a certified english teaching, scary huh?

as soon as i finished the pause i went right to spain. i met up with a buddy from college here (in madrid) and 4 of his highschool friends and we all went to pomplona for the running of the bulls. running with the bulls on thursday was one of the most intense things i have ever done. 3,000 people ran the first morning, and it was just insanity. a cannon goes off to let you know the bulls are loose, and then another goes off when they are rounding the first corner. a half mile and barely over 2 minutes later we were in the arena, and they were letting the bulls out one by one to let us practice being amatuer matadores. i knelt down in front of the gate, and the bull jumped over my head. but i survived, and had an amazing time.

tomorrow i go back to prague for three weeks, so ill finally have time to see prague (i didnt have any time during the course) and some of the rest of czech.

So after my journey around Germany and Austria, I am finally in Prague and the classes have started. They are really going well, a lot less scary than I anticipated. I teach my first class on Thursday if you can believe that. Mr. Stiglitz, although you I will just be going by Jacob. Anyway, I dont really feel like updating this thing if no one is reading it. So complain in a comment or something if you want me to keep writing, otherwise I can just keep it to myself. I'll put up all about what I did in Austria and Germany eventaully, and some pictures to come with it.

Finally got some more pictures up, and figured out, for now, the best way for yall to view them. Click on the flickr thing to the right and it will take you to a short slideshow of the trip so far.

On another note, I leave for Berlin tomorrow. The plan is to visit Chad for a few days in Berlin, then head to Heidelberg to visit Christoph (11th grade German exchange student), then Nuernberg to see Alaina (good friend from back home who has helped me develope my travel addiction), and then Vienna to party with Sebastian (10th grade German exchange student). After that Ill find my way over to Prague to move in with Sam and his buddy from Budapest who are both playing Ultimate Frisbee with the Czech National team, more on that when I figure it out myself. I will be taking a TEFL course and enjoying more time abroad.

Since my last post about whats been going on in my life, I have had a few days of must needed rest. I have been hanging out in Jersey with the folks. Alan graduated from the New School on Friday which was very exciting. The Dean quoted his application essay in her speech which I think is great. 51 years... impressive. Here's to me and all of my friends and family having the same drive (raising my soon-in-hand German or Czech beer)!

Since I can't figure out how to upload all of my pictures at once, this will have to do for now. Eventually I will get all of my pictures up (probably on the photos.yahoo.com site that I have which is linked to above)