a free trip to Bangkok

Around New Years, I called the Peace Corps doctors to ask for more ibuprofen because my knee was causing some serious pain and I was done. We figured since I couldn’t even dance at the New Year’s party, it was time for me to get it checked out. One MRI and a trip to Bangkok later, I was having surgery to repair my cartilage and daily physical therapy.

The nice part about being in Thailand for about 6 weeks is that I got to know the hospital staff pretty well. My physical therapists were great and my surgeon was the doctor for the Thai Olympic team in London. The hospital is a popular place for rich people from the Middle East to get their medical needs taken care of which means I saw a lot of fancy food and ate a lot of delicious halal food. Thai food I could take or leave, but halal food – that I miss.

Although I wasn’t terribly mobile during my first few weeks after surgery, I did manage to see a bit of the city and even managed one day-trip to the nearby former capital that was sacked by the Burmese a few hundred years ago. I was even luckier that there were 11 other PCVs that I spent time with while there and only had a week on my own. That was a beautiful week where I ate bagels with Philadelphia cream cheese for breakfast shwarma for dinner every day. I’m happy to be back in the land of steamed mutton dumplings, really I am. It’s amazing how your mind can forget what delicious things the world contains.

One of the advantages of Mongolia over Bangkok is the constant presence of a blue sky. The sky might not be a thing of beauty, but there were many other wonderful things to see. For example, there is this lovely canal near the hotel and hospital:

I took a boat down it a couple times.

A very large, golden reclining Buddha at Wat Po. This is the only decent picture my camera took of it:

 Wat Arun – a pretty temple with stairs that were very steep and scary:

 The Grand Palac:

 The Giant Swing, which sadly does not have a swing attached. The guidebook says people used to die on the swing, so maybe that’s for the best:

 A mural with cowfish and horsefish:

 Pad Thai wrapped in an omelet on recommendation from RPCVs. It was overpriced but quite tasty

And in Ayutthaya, even more sights!

 Ruins that the mean Burmese burned and made blackened when they sacked the city:

 Sad beheaded, mutilated Buddhas:

 Buddha heads in trees:

 Pretty stupas that weren’t completely destroyed

And that, folks, was my adventure as a medical tourist in a nutshell. I rather liked being a medical tourist rather than a regular tourist. Let’s just hope I never have cause to be a medical tourist again.

let's play catch-up!

Hello friends! I realize I haven't posted since around Thanksgiving, but life has been rather hectic. From Thanksgiving to New Years, the PCMOs (doctors) in Mongolia and I kept in steady contact because my knee was in serious pain. On January 2, I went in to UB for an MRI and on the 12th, I was on my way to Bangkok, Thailand, for an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon and eventually knee surgery. I'm still in Bangkok awaiting release because I'm fine now, really, I just need the Peace Corps people in Thailand, Mongolia, and Washington to agree with me. Later I'll post stories and pictures from this adventure because currently all of my pictures are stuck on my memory card and I have no way to get them off. Alas. In other news, I've received my first two grad school acceptances - American University and the George Washington University - to study International Education. I'm still waiting to hear from their financial aid departments and from two more schools before I finally decide.

Whew. That was long. And a lot of information. Sorry. Moving on!

Waaay back in December, the foreign language department put on a little event called Foreign Language Week. It was nicely situated right before Christmas, so we got to do a lot of Christmas themed activities and have some fun with the students. All of the classes from 5th grade to 11th grade learned holiday songs in English and Russian with the favorite being We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The original plan was to have a competition, but that turned out to be logistically impossible, so we just had fun with it instead.

The two 5th grade clases made decorations to put on a Christmas tree on the wall. There was a great debate between other non-English teachers and me when deciding how to draw the tree. The usual Mongolian way is with snow-covered curvy branches and I was all for the sharp angles. I prevailed but it turned out to not matter because the kids made ENORMOUS decorations that completely hid the tree.

The biggest event of the week was the Trivia competition for the 10th and 11th grade classes. The week before, I created information blurbs for five categories agreed upon by the English department and we posted them in the hallway so the students could study. We displayed the questions on a Powerpoint on the wall and had the teams check each others' work to discourage cheating. It turned out really well and the students probably learned more about American/English culture preparing for the competition than they do all year from the textbooks. Success!

supervising while the students work on their answers

one of the questions from the powerpoint - spelling doesn't count :)

me with the two winning teams - 10V and 10B

One of my favorite things to do is holiday crafts with my kindergarden class. Christmas did not disappoint as we made Christmas tree decorations and taped them on to a paper tree. These kids never disappoint.

Then to round off 2012, my first entire year not being in the US, we had a nice New Years party where I sadly couldn't dance because of knee pain but had a great time anyway because the teachers at my school are good fun. Since coming to Thailand, I have missed two more holidays (Teachers' Day and Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year) and I really don't want to miss any more.

Сайхан шинэлээрэй!

car rides and weddings and Teshig, oh my

One day last month, I was in the teachers lounge listening to all of the teachers talking about something. I was studying for the GRE so I wasn't really paying attention until I heard the words "wedding" and "Teshig." I instantly tried to start following the conversation because Teshig is supposed to be the prettiest soum in the aimag and my reaction to cultural events in this country is a bit like this. I spent the next two weeks telling everyone that I wanted to go and eventually the school's director agreed that I could go.

The plan was a little something like this:
Friday - leave early, drive to Bulgan and visit two schools there then continue on to Khutag-Ondor (maybe)
Saturday - visit Khutag-Ondor's school, drive to the Khongor district a couple hours away for a wedding, then continue on to Teshig.
Sunday -  visit Teshig's school then head home.

Reality was nothing like that.

To start, we left 5 hours after we were supposed to which threw everything off and set the tone for the remainder of the trip.

The first day we drove out to Khutag-Ondor soum and stayed with a former teacher from our school who lives about 10km outside of town. That was a pretty uneventful day. The next morning's breakfast was boiled horse intestines/innards which I don't eat, so I escaped the house and went and played in the snow by myself. Well, almost by myself. Once when I was messing with the timer to take pictures of myself, this happened:

biggest. dog. ever.

One time he stood up on his back legs, put the other two on my shoulders and licked my face. We were best friends. Other than dog "attacks," it was super pretty out there.

the house we stayed in

From there we made a quick stop in Khutag-Ondor to pick up the rest of our group and continued to our next destination - the wedding. The wedding took place in a district of Khutag-Ondor a couple hours away from the main village. A former teacher's son got married and they invited his former teachers. This was a different former teacher than the one we stayed with overnight - don't worry, I was extremely confused for a solid day about this. There was singing and copious amounts of vodka, both of which I try to avoid, so basically I just sat and ate a lot of potato salad. This is my usual m.o. at Mongolian parties, except usually there's dancing so I feel less bad about eating all that potato salad. It's just so tasty!

inside the wedding reception ger

toasting the bride and groom

me and a teacher outside the ger

I have never actually seen a Mongolian wedding but I've gone to two receptions. On our way out of town, our car got stuck trying to go up a little hill. Fresh snow is terrible for travelling in this country and snow/winter tires do not exist in the hudoo. It went a little like this:

"Oh no, our car is stuck! Whatever shall we do??"

"Let's push it!"

"That's not working? It's okay, we menfolk will lift it out!"

"Maybe we need all hands on deck for this one..."

"We're unstuck! Happy! But I've fallen on the ice. Sad."

We drove for awhile, took pictures on a bridge over a river, then continued on until Teshig.

And this, my friends, is where my narration ends. Teshig is incredibly beautiful, I'm glad I was able to go, and I'll share my pictures. But if you've talked to me about this trip, you know it was not a terribly pleasant trip for me. If you ask nicely, I'll tell you all about it but I can't do it publicly. Enjoy Teshig, I wish I could transplant its buildings to my soum.

the sign welcoming travelers to Teshig with the soum in the background

Teshig's 9 year secondary school

the school's on the right, the dorm we stayed in are on the left

PUPPIES! living in the construction site by school and will probably all die during the winter

cultural center

all of the houses/buildings in town looked like log cabins. I WANT THEM

there were TWO karaoke bars. my town has none. I nearly cried

the lake outside Teshig

the Mongolian contingent from my soum outside the Teshig Ovoo

And with that, I bid you adieu. Sorry for having two long ones in a row but it could be awhile before my next one. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and go be especially violent at Black Friday sales for me. That's my favorite part of the holiday season. And pie, of course.

Altan Namar - the celebration that just wouldn't end

16 October 2012

I promise I haven’t died. First my computer's power cord died in September. Then when I tried to post this in October, my computer blue screened in the middle and I gave up. I haven't really had internet since. Welcome to my backlog.

Starting at the end of September, my school starting celebrating the “Golden Autumn” (Altan Namar) and it hasn't really ended since. Mongolian trees apparently only turn yellow during fall and the color lasted a long time this year, so we celebrated. The teachers were broken into teams (I got myself on the food committee after telling them I was sad that they forgot to include me) and each team had a week to prepare their activity. I didn't actually prepare anything, but I participated as best I could.

The first event involved some local farmers coming to school to talk to the different classes. To welcome them, the classes made posters about the lives and accomplishments of the visitors – and by classes I mean the teachers because I didn't see a single student involved. One of the 10th grade teachers grabbed me to take pictures of her class listening to the lecture. Turns out their speaker is the father of my old hashaa man so I'd met him before. I may not have understood anything he was talking about except the word "potato" every now and again, but it was the first time I'd ever seen Mongolian children sit and behave so I was impressed. (Though let's be honest, American children find this challenging as well)

The next day (Friday), the whole school walked out of town for about 30 minutes to have a picnic and play games to celebrate this Golden Autumn. I was drafted to help with the older grades in some of their competitions. All that ended up meaning was that I judged a song competition for 20 minutes and spent the majority of the day drinking milk tea and eating with the other teachers similarly not busy. 

10B - the winning class

looks like she's doing something bad, but just making milk tea

the teachers with our own celebration

The following Friday, there was an Altan Namar sports competition day. Because it wasn't enough that we had one the month before to celebrate the start of the new school year. Apparently in the morning, all of the teachers had a running competition but I wasn't there because I wasn't told about it. My director asked why I wasn't there and scolded me a little bit, but I looked at the poster announcing the event afterward, and it said nothing about my need to participate, only homeroom teachers', so I wasn't crazy. In the end, that's all that matters. Anyway, the morning was made up of running events, followed by many hours of a volleyball tournament. Since I'm not Mongolian and don't have the undying passion for volleyball that they have, I got bored after a few hours and left. Apparently the competition went on until 9pm and I was really glad I decided to not stay. Validation!

2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders running their first ever relay, to much confusion

11A vs. 7A, not a fair fight. plus check out the earring and faux hawk on the guy in front

The following week was food week when I was supposed to help judge or something. I never figured out what my role actually was because the two teachers in charge are two that seem to have a problem with my being here and don't talk to me. I made up my own purpose and just walked around talking to the kids and taking pictures. Every class was assigned a day to make food using local ingredients that they then sold to the rest of the school. There was a lot of potato khuushuur, cabbage salad, potato salad, and seabuckthorn juice. A lot of classes weren't prepared for their turns during the week so on the last day, a lot of classes participated. They all set up tables in the gym and the teachers, workers, students, and some parents walked around buying food. Everything was complicated by the power going out, but the food was delicious and I was more stuffed than I had been in a long time.

7A during the week

the gym setup on Friday

5B

10V

5A

Bet you thought I was done. Oh no, the title is completely serious. Just when I thought, "Altan Namar must FINALLY be finished," someone would tell me there's another week. Then I'd hit my head against a wall a couple times and brace myself for the next week's ridiculousness. But I was not alone in this - by then, the majority of other teachers were thinking of joining me in the head-bashing.

One day they told me all the teachers had work on Saturday. I don't usually go to those because nobody tells me about them until afterwards, but since I knew about it, I went. It turned out that teachers were raking up dead weeds from the school yard and burning them as well as planting more trees. I suggested weeding during the spring and summer so people could see the trees we planted but I got only blank stares in response. Also, planting trees in October didn't seem like the smartest idea to me. I mean, I woke up that morning to see this:

That can't be good for freshly planted trees.

In the FINAL dying breath of Altan Namar when we were all starting to get really irritated, there was a poetry competition. Kids were pulled out of class to compete and teachers pulled out to judge, leaving me with the the more rowdy students all by myself. Not a happy day in my life. But it signaled the welcome end to the madness. Two more pictures and we're done. Your relief mirrors what I felt last month. Buy yourself a cookie for making it through, that's what I did.

the students' poetry and stories about Altan Namar on display

poetry contest