Training

Time does fly differently here. I've been away from Pasadena for one month and one day now, but it feels much longer than that. Although my sense of time has begun to sync with what feels normal, for the first couple of weeks time moved much slower (or faster, depending on your perspective). After I'd been there two weeks, it already felt like I'd been there at least a month, because so much had been going on. Now I'm sitting in a restaurant in a different town with free wifi that's actually working at the moment. Since it's been a looooooong time since I've been online, let alone posted here, I've got a lot to go over.

My first flight, on Thursday, June 2, 2011, was from LAX to SFO, where I met the other trainees (we're not volunteers yet) in the M22 group (i.e., the 22nd group of people going to Mongolia) and attended "Staging" (the pre-Orientation Orientation that takes place in America).

From there we flew to Korea on Friday June 3, and in the process of crossing the International Date Line it became Saturday June 4. Because I used to live in Japan and I had a sentimental attachment to it, I negotiated with the other passengers to get a window seat so I could Japan when we flew over it. To my great disappointment, we didn't: we crossed Sakhalin Island and then flew south down the Sea of Japan without even touching Hokkaido. Fortunately, I got some nice views of the mountains of eastern Siberia.

We had a nearly 24-hour layover there with nothing to do but hang out and look around Incheon (or Seoul, for those wanted to pay $90 for a 40-minute taxi ride one way).

On Sunday June 5 we left Incheon. As could be expected, it was hot and humid, so I took off my denim jacket and ended up leaving it at the gate when we boarded. I don't think I was the only person either. If airport security hasn't already blown up the unattended item, someone who works at Incheon International has a nice new denim jacket.

The flight to Ulaanbaatar took 3 hours and then 3 ½ very long days after I left home I was finally in Mongolia. We spent the night in a ger camp, got vaccinated for meningitis, hepatitis, and rabies, and delivered our winter bags into the hands of the storage people. We won't be getting those bags again until the end of PST (Pre-Service Training) in late August.

Then we had a three-hour bus ride north to the Training Center. It rained along the way, which is supposed to be a good sign. At Training Center we stayed in a high-school dorm and attended meetings with lots and lots and lots of information. We started language lessons. In the evening we got set free to roam the streets and attempt to buy all the things you forgot or failed to foresee needing in Mongolia. I spent it mostly with a cool group of fellow trainees – Chris, Nick, and Tim – discovering Kharkhorin beer.

After four days of this, and one week from the time I left home, I got moved again, this time to my training site. The big Orientation for everyone is only a preface to PST: the real action happens elsewhere in smaller training communities. Our 68 people were divided into 6 groups: one for health volunteers, one for business volunteers, one for community development volunteers, and the TEFL volunteers, including me and the biggest group overall, were split up apparently randomly. Each of these groups was then shipped off to a small (or at least small-ER) Mongolian community a little bit away from Training Center. Each of the volunteers is then sent to live with a host family in the community.

My training site is S---- (No, I'm not going to type out the whole name, for security reasons Peace Corps doesn't want us to post our exact locations, but if you already know me you can just email me and ask). So on Thursday June 9, I was shipped over there with 11 other TEFL trainees. Unfortunately one of us already went home due to family issues back in America. That leaves 11 of us now: me, Rachel, David, Nathan, Bryant, Garrett, Natalie, Christine, Kari, Heather, and Joe. Besides that, our group includes Munguntuya (Moogii) and Munkh-Uchral (Uchka), our LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators, i.e. our Mongolian teachers).

On Sunday June 12, we all went back to Training Center to get follow-up shots. I also got to use a computer in an internet café. That was the last internet access I had for 16 days, until I got a few hours of very slow service thanks to Kari and Natalie talking the principal into letting us use the school's internet flash drive, which seems to be the only internet access in S----.

S---- is in the far north of Mongolia. We are so close to Russia - the part of Russia known as Siberia - that if you climb up the Big Hill you can see some mountains which are actually in Siberia.

More to come!