The Eye of Tengri

MWW 10: дүү

2012-01-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

Cyrillic	дүү
Transcription	düü
IPA	[tʉ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DOOH
Translation	younger sibling; younger
In Genghis Khan’s time it was degüü.

By my calculations I owe you three words of the week. Continuingwith the theme of words that make distinctions English doesn’t, this day’s(week’s?) word is дүү.

There’s probably no better word to begin talking about thedifferences between traditional Mongolian and English-speaking families. Дүү does not correspond in a one-wayrelationship to any English word for a relative, because it can refer to eithera younger brother, or a younger sister. Mongolian does not have separate wordsfor them. However, it never refers to an olderbrother (ах) or an oldersister (эгч). Basically, дүү is a word that classifies relatives bytheir age, not their gender.

Of course Mongolians can be specific if they want. If they want to bemore specific they can call a younger brother эрэгтэй дүүor бүстэй дүүand call a younger sister эмэгтэй дүү or бүсгүйдүү. English speakers can also add “younger” or “older” to thewords “brother” or “sister” if they want to talk about how old they are. Thepoint is that English speakers have to specify gender when they talk aboutsiblings, but they don’t have to specify age, and that Mongolians have tospecify age, but they don’t have to specify gender (at least for youngersiblings).

This is part of a biggerpattern. English words for relatives usually indicate the gender of therelative (except “cousin”). They don’t distinguish the ages of people in the same generation. Mongolians wordsfor relatives don’t always distinguish the gender of the relative, but many ofthem distinguish whether relatives in the same generation are older or younger.For example, in addition to the words for siblings, Mongolian also hasdifferent words for one’s aunts and uncles, depending on whether they’re olderor younger than one’s mother or father.

Perhaps in Mongolian cultureage is just a bigger deal than it is in America. Perhaps it has to do with thefact that older children often participate in the family’s work, includingacting as a caretaker for younger children. Children of different ages reallyaren’t considered the same or equal. I do know that in my сум (county), children ofrural nomadic families usually have to live in a dormitory during the schoolyear. Students are grouped in dorm rooms primarily by who is related to whom.For most of the year school children don’t live with their parents, but they dolive with their older brothers and sisters, who are then responsible for their дүү нар (that’s the plural of дүү). Of coursethis doesn’t apply to the hundreds of years before Mongolians hadprimary-school education. I don’t really know the reason, but I do know thereis some deeply ingrained social reason that Mongolians feel that the age ofrelatives is essential information, but Anglophones don’t.

She’sдүү-er than me

Дүү refers to age in a more general sensebecause people use it to talk about who’s older or younger, even when theyaren’t related to each other. To say that someone is younger than you, youwould say something like,

Тэр надаас дөрвөн нас дүү.

She-NOMINATIVE me.ABLATIVE four yearyounger-sibling

“She is four years younger than me.”

using the word for younger sibling. It could be rendered into English as“She is my younger sister by four years,” but “she” doesn’t have to be relatedto the speaker at all in order to say this. Here, it simply means, “She is fouryears younger than me.”

Confusion

If the different way of talking about relatives confuses you, don’tworry, it confuses Mongolians too. Mongolian schoolchildren seem to have beentaught that English “brother” is equivalent to Mongolian ах (older brother) and English “sister” is equivalent to Mongolian эгч(older sister). They also know that “younger brother” and “younger sister” bothmean дүү. However, it’s never pointed out that Mongolian and Westernnotions of family are different, or how. Many of them don’t realize that“younger” is a separate word that describes “brother” or “sister” and iscompletely optional. This means that whenever I talk to Mongolians, they almostalways tell me that a younger brother is a “youngerbrother.” For the rest of the conversation, they will continue to use the fullphrase “younger brother,” even though I knew long ago that he was younger.

In fact, many of them don’t realize that a “younger brother”is still a kind of brother and that a “younger sister” is still a kind of sister.This means that (no joke) I have also had conversations like this:

Me: Doyou have a brother?

Student: No,I do not have a brother. But I have two younger brothers.

Me: ???

I really think these kids need to learn more about culture, not justmemorizing vocabulary and grammar rules.

Erecting a Ger - Part IV: Inside the Ger

2012-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Inside the ger, they put up curtain-like wall hangings. These sheets are the equivalent of wall paper. They look prettier than the wall framework and gray felt sheets. Like some of the other stuff, they have loops that are tied to the top of the wall beams and hang downward.

Now they attach the rope that runs from the very center of the roof ring, goes through the eastern pillar, hangs down, and and is bunched up above the roof poles. Every ger has one of these, but I don’t know why. I'm convinced it must be symbolic rather than functional. In fact, it's taboo to hand your clothes (or anything else) from this rope.

Now the floor needs more work. When it turns out that the floor boards aren’t completely even, one of the boards is padded up by folding an old instant-noodle bulk box and slipping it on top of the board, underneath the plastic floor cover. Now the floor is even!

Giant rolls of scotch tape seal the cracks / gaps in the plastic sheet, so less air seeps in through the bottom of the ger. (Fun fact: The Mongolian word for tape is скоч, from the word "scotch.")

Later part of the floor will get covered with a proper carpet. But as one of my friends asked, since Mongolians have been living in round gers for thousands of years, why don’t they make round floor coverings or rugs?

This is not round

Now the ger is complete and people can live in it! (Well, actually, they still need to set up at the bed and stove.)

Erecting a Ger - Part III: Dressing the Ger

2012-01-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

A layer of canvas is put over the roof poles. Ropes help keep it down.

So do cloth loops.

Then there’s a felt sheet over the roof.

Push more of them up with a spare pole.

Felt sheets around the walls. Ropes threaded through one corner of the sheet, over the roof, and threaded again through the other corner, help keep the sheets on the ger.

Putting up the paper covering.

This is Russian. Apparently the paper covering is … milk?

Putting up the waterproof plastic tarp.

More canvas on top.

There are two pillars on either side of the doorframe. Two ropes (or in this case, giant rubber bands, I guess) run all the way around the outside of the ger. They are looped around the poles and then tied to the doorframe.

MWW 9: ингэ

2012-01-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

Cyrillic	ингэ
Transcription	inge
IPA	[iŋk]
Layman’s Pronunciation	INK
Translation	adult female camel
In Genghis Khan’s time it was ingge.

Today’s word is an example of something where Mongolian makes much finerdistinctions than English does, and perhaps about how Mongolians care a lotmore about camels than Americans do. Today’s word is ингэ,an “adult female camel.” This means that the camel it refers to is fully-grownand female. It is not a male camel. It is not a baby camel. And it mostcertainly never ever refers to a male llama embryo. By contrast, poor Englishonly has the very broad word “camel,” and to get the level of specificity above ithas to tack on two adjectives for a total of six syllables, all to say whatMongolians can say in one concise syllable: ингэ.

Erecting a Ger - Part II: Assembling the Framework

2012-01-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

The center of the ger is put together first, upside down. The pillars are lashed to the roof ring.

Roof ring + pillars

Some other people extend the walls and put them up around the floor. You can’t tell, but the tops of the walls lean inwardly slightly. The walls themselves are also a little bent. So the side of a ger isn’t straight but a little convex.

Putting up walls

This is the assembled pillar-and-window set, lying in the middle of the ger and waiting to be put upright.

The beams at the edge of each wall fit together with the edge of the next wall like a puzzle. A rope is woven through the place where they join.

Edges of walls with rope woven through

Then the roof poles are put up. The laced ends rest on top of the walls, and the twine loop is looped over the beams in the walls. The tapered ends are fitted into the notches of the center ring. There’s also a rope running around the top of the ger, through the wall beams, and another one running through the wall beams near the bottom.

Roof poles in place

Twine loop + top of the wall

Roof poles fitting into the roof ring

The ropes running the circumference of the ger are tied to either side of the doorframe. There’s also a rope running from the roof ring to the top of the door frame. Everything is getting all tied together, literally.

Doorframe

Here's another rope in the roof. It must have some function, but I don’t know what.

Another rope

Erecting a Ger - Part I: Building Materials

2012-01-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

Since I’ve already discussed winterizing an already-standingger, this time let’s discuss putting up a ger from the ground up. Three monthsago (of course) I got to help put a new ger together, although I ended up doingmore photography than actual labor. It’s OK though, they understood that Idon’t get to see this in the U.S.

Seeing as this is so long, I'll try something new and split this into several posts. It's a ger-building series!

Elements of a ger

In this first picture you can see the parts of a gergathered together and laying in a dusty yard. We have the doorframe, walls, centerpillars, canvas cover, tarp, wall hanging, rope, roof poles, center ring, andfloor. Here they all are individually:

Ger floor

At this point the floor (шал or хаяа) has already mostly been put together. The workers swept, leveled, and stomped the area where the ger would be put up, and layed out nine wooden floor pieces made of boards nailed together. Then there’s a thick plastic sheet with a fake linoleum design on it.

Ger walls

A ger wall (хана)is a framework of hinged wooden beams that can be compressed or stretched outlike an accordion. The size of a ger is expressed by how many walls it has. Myger is a five-wall ger, so there are five of these accordion-like segments puttogether. This ger only has four, so it’s a little smaller than mine.

Here's a close-up

Roof ring

The roof ring (тооно) is the ger’s “window,” the round opening at the top ofthe ger in the center. It is painted with traditional designs. The outer rim of the ring has slots for the ends of the roofpoles to fit into.

8259

8263

Roof poles

These poles (унь) formthe roof, or at least the basis of the roof, of the ger. One end of each roof pole has a twine rope threaded throughit. The other end is tapered.

Pillars

These pillars will hold up the roof of the ger. They are also highly decorated.

Ger coverings

Among the various sheets and covering that go in the ger arethe canvas layer, the wall hanging, and the water-proof plastic tarp, all shownhere.

These paper sheets - basically like a giant paper bag - alsoform part of the covering.

Felt sheets (эсгий)

Ger door (хаалга)

Next up: Assembling the framework...

MWW 8: дээл

2012-01-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

Cyrillic	дээл
Transcription	deel
IPA	[te:ɬ]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DALE
Translation	del/deel, traditional Mongolian robe
In Genghis Khan’s time it was debel.

Since we recently had Mongolian National Deel Day, дээл is a fine word for this isssue. In this case,“Mongolian National Deel Day” is not really a “day.” Nor was it a “week.” Trueto the way of doing things here, which sometimes seems strange to me, Deel Daywas actually four days long, lasting from Monday through Thursday (but notFriday). Also, it was not a nation-wide celebration. It was our school’s ideato do it and as far as I know only we did it. “National” here instead is meantto refer to the fact that the дээл is the nationaldress, for both men and women. The point of Mongolian National Deel Day wasprobably to stir up pride in traditional culture. More concretely, it was toget all the faculty, staff, and students to wear the national costume for fourdays.

The дээл is a kind of robe, but instead of being buttoned in front like Americanclothes, it’s fastened on the side. Putting on a deel, first the right side ofthe robe is pulled over the front of the body, all the way over to one’s leftside. Then, the left side of the deel is pulled over the right side. On the edgeof that left flap are tiny cloth loops. There are also tiny cloth knots on theright side of the deel, under the sleeve and on the shoulder. To fasten thedeel you slips the knots through the loops, just as you would slip a buttonthrough a buttonhole. Then a бүс (deel belt) - like a long scarf- is wrapped snuggly around the waist. Your deel is fastened!

The left and right flaps ofthe deel and the belt create a large pocket on your chest. Deels have collars,that can also be fastened by loops and knots. The bottom of the deel usuallygoes all the way down to the top of one’s boots, covering the legs too. Thesleeves are much longer than a person’s arms. Traditionally Mongolians didn’twear gloves. When they went ouside they just let the edge of the sleeve handover their hands, and when they needed to do fine handwork, they flipped backthe sleeve.

Deels can be made out of different kinds of fabric. Thereare also different seasonal deels. Summer deels are thin and light. Winterdeels can be very heavy and are often lined with felt. Both men and women weardeels, although the fashions for each of them differ. Everyday deels areusually a dull blue or green, but festive deels come in all colors and usuallyhave geometric patterns embroidered on them. All Mongolians used to wear deels,but under Soviet influence and modernization, professional people began to wearsuits. Since the nation’s democratization many people follow Western fashions,and kids dress a lot like kids in the U.S. Nowadays some herders still wear deelson a day-to-day basis, but for everyone else, deels are usually worn on specialoccasions, sort of like tuxedoes, or like kimonos in Japan.

Mongolian students wearing deels

Blue Christmas

2012-01-23T08:54:00.000-08:00

You know, now three weeks without using the internet doesn’tseem like such a long time.

I was excited to get a nifty thermometer for Christmas andinstalled it in my ger. If I make a fire, the thermomemeter will spring up ashigh as 37°C (98.6°F). If I don’t make a fire, during the middle of the daythe temperature in my ger stays fairly consistently just below 0°C (32°F).Unfortunately, it only goes down to -10°C (14°F), and every morning when I wakeup it’s at the lowest reading, so I’m never sure if it’s really -10°C or if itactually got colder and my thermometer was just unable to register it.

Speaking of Christmas, I spent Christmas in the аймгын төв (aimgiin töv, provincial center) withfive other regional PCVs, two Korean KOICA volunteers and some of theirMongolian friends. Mongolians don’t get Christmas off, but luckily it was on aSunday this year. Next year I may have to file for time off to celebrate.

When I got back, some of my possessions were frozen, andsome weren’t. The peanut butter, 5% vinegar, soybean oil, and milk (4%!), as well as all water, froze.The jelly, 70% vinegar, bleach, and dish soap did not.

My village had a Christmas-themed New Year’s party with ablue Santa Claus. Mongolians don’t know much about American holidays and mostof them think Christmas is the American New Year. I told some people that it’sa different holiday, but I think what they got out of it was, “Americanscelebrate New Year’s on December 25.”

Santa Claus

Left to right: School director, Santa, student, soum governor, two students, school social worker. The students won an art contest.

Santa and the snow fairies

MWW 7: гэр

2011-12-28T05:51:00.000-08:00

ger

[ger]

GAIR

“home, yurt”

It was called ger in ChinggisKhaan’s time too.

Since I wrote about my ger in the last post, why not make ger the next word of the fortnight?

My ger

Ger in the snow

Ger has both ageneral meaning and a specific meaning. In the specific sense, it refers to thetraditional Mongolian nomadic dwelling made of felt over a wooden frame - otherwiseknown as a “yurt” in English. But aside from that, in the general sense, ger means simply “home.” Of course formany Mongols, possibly the majority, the two senses coincide and no distinctionneed be made. But wherever you live is your ger, whether it’s a yurt, a house,an apartment, or a palace. Even the president of the United States, as he heads to the White House, would bejustified in uttering this common phrase,

Би гэрлүүгээ явлаа.

Bi gerlüügee yavlaa.

“I’m going home.”

in which gerlüügee is the sameas the English adverb “home” - composed of ger,“home,” lüü, “to” (an allative casesuffix), and ee, the reflexivepossessive suffix, which is really interesting, but basically means that thething it’s attached to belongs to the subject of the sentence.

гэрлүүгээ харих

to return (to one's own) home

гэрийн даалгавар

homework

гэрийн ажил хийх

to do housework

гэр барих

to build a ger

гэр дулаалдах

to winterize a ger (link)

I could go on with this word, but why not stretch it out and save some of the more interesting derived forms for later posts?

Gers should be cleaned out regularly.

Winterizing a Ger

2011-12-24T01:46:00.000-08:00

Gers change through the year. In the summer, they're light and cool. In the winter, they're heavy and warm (provided you keep your fire going). To ensure this, they are modified twice a year. These processes are called "winterization" (дулаалах) and "summerization." Peace Corps has requirements about how and when the gers that volunteers live in are to be winterized. As you may recall, the frost came on September 7. Three days later, on September 10, my хашаа (hashaa) family came and said they were going to winterize my ger. Looking up at the bright sun, I thought, "Whatever," but we got down to work and worked up a sweat. There was more sweat on their part than mine, because I spent so much of the time taking pictures. My hashaa dad seemed to think it was funny, but they all understood that this was all really interesting to Americans, even though it was pretty mundane to them. Even though it didn't seem like winterizing was urgently necessary, the the Mongolians, naturally, turned out to be right: two days after that, we got our first snowfall.

Phase I: Adding Insulation

One of the great things about gers, compared to houses or apartments, is that you can easily take it apart, fix something, and put it back together without too much time, effort, a work permit, or contractor's license. Phase I consisted of improving the insulation of my ger by adding more felt. This is the biggest step in making the ger warmer. It can be compared to putting on thermal underwear in that you have to take off your clothes, put on your thermals, and put your clothes back on.

Step 1

The first step in winterization, naturally, is to strip the ger almost naked. The ropes are surrounding it are untied and the outer canvas layer and the waterproof covering are removed, exposing the layer of felt inside.

This is my felt-y ger with the blue tarp lying on top.

Step 2

The next step is to add more felt. Felt layers are what keeps insulates the ger. In the summer, there's only one layer, and in the winter there are usually two. You could add more, but I've been told that if you too much felt, if it gets wet, it won't dry out quickly enough and can get moldy. Each layer of felt actually consists of five or so separate pieces: three long rectangular sheets that go around the sides of the ger, and two pieces, shaped sort of like half-moons or wedge fries, that go over the top around the central opening.

Mongolian men hauling pieces of felt

Unless you're a giant you can't reach all the way across the top of the ger to pull the felt pieces up and lay them out neatly. We heaved the top pieces as far up the top as we could. We used a roof-pole to reach over the top, pick up the felt, and spread it out as needed. Then we pulled the felt back down to get it to the proper height.

A roof pole helps to manipulate the felt when it's out of reach on top of the ger.

Spreading out and pulling down a piece of felt on the roof

The men use scissors or knives to puncture a few places in a piece of felt. Then they run string through the holes in different pieces to tie all the felt together and keep it from falling off the ger.

Securing a piece of felt

We also put up a clothesline inside, because it will eventually get too cold to dry clothes outside.

Ger with new felt layers in place

Mongolians are wonderful with spontaneous, DIY responses to certain issues that come up in the middle of certain processes. In the case of my winterization, it turned out that the top felt pieces didn't completely cover my roof. So they made up the difference ... with a quilt made out of old clothes stitched together.

Notice the butt part of some jeans in the quilt draped across the top of my ger door.

Step 3

The last step of the insulation phase is just the reverse of the first step: putting back everything you took off in order to add more felt. We took this opportunity to add more plastic tarp as well, since I had some leaks the last time it rained heavily. At this point one of the other English teachers helped us, and since she is a short little woman, she was small enough to climb on top of the ger to smooth things out around the roof hole, without upsetting the balance of the ger.

Putting the tarp back on

Putting the outer canvas layer back on

Gers have two ropes that encircle the walls of the ger and secured to poles on either side of the door frame. They're another way of keeping the ger together.

Putting the encircling ropes back on. Left: history teacher; Top: English teacher; Right: hashaa dad / social worker

The top of the ger has an opening, which is covered with a square piece of cloth (not pictured). Each corner of the cloth has a rope attached to it. Three of these ropes - in the back and on the left and right sides of the ger - are threaded under and tied around the encircling ropes, then tied to a rock or brick on the bottom of the ger. The weight keeps the flap from blowing away in the wind. I think it also stabilizes the ger itself. Are there any engineers reading this who can explain how this works? The last rope - in the front - is not tied down with a brick. This way you pull it back to open the top of the ger, or pull it forward to close the top of the ger.

Tying a brick to one of the ropes running from the roof flap. In the larger view, notice that this rope is also tied around the ropes that run around the ger in a circle.

Phase II: Sealing the Bottom and Erecting the Ping

The second phase involved sealing the bottom of the ger with dirt and erecting a shed called a пин (ping) in front of the ger. For this phase, my hashaa dad recruited Class 10b students to do the dirty work.

Step 1

In preparation, students took strips of plastic tarp and put them around the base of the ger, tucking them into the lowest rope that runs around my ger.

Putting sections of tarp around the bottom of the ger

Strips of tarp tucked into the ropes

Then the students hauled buckets of dirt (not hard to find) over to my ger and dumped it around the base. When it surrounded my ger from one side of the door to the other, they ramped it up against the base and compacted it with their feet. The floor of the ger is always the coldest part, because cold air seeps in under the canvas and felt. The hard dirt blocks air coming in around most of the bottom. And in the event rain or melting snow dampens the dirt, the plastic protects the ger from moisture.

Hauling dirt

Compacting dirt

Step 2

Then they put up the ping. This was actually the small outdoor kitchen that my hashaa family used during the summer, taken apart and moved across the yard. The area in front of the ger door was cleared and a wooden floor put down. Then three wooden walls were put up, and finally a metal a roof, which also helped hold the whole thing together.

Making grooves for the crossbeams of the floor to fit into

With the floor of the shed in place, the walls can be put up

A little dirt is cleared from the bottom of the ger so the ping can be slid right up against the ger with no gap.

Fitting all the parts together and putting the roof on.

The inside of the ping

Ger with dirt ramps and new ping in place

Phase III: Windows

Phase III consisted of putting glass windows into the opening at the top of the ger. The windows actually rest on some wooden strips nailed to the sides of the beams inside the roof opening. With these in place, the flap can be opened a little bit to let light in, without letting warm air out.

Installing windows

Phase IV: Sealing the Ping

I don't have pictures, but later we ramped dirt around the bottom of the ping too, and put tied a rope from the roof to some heavy, rusty car part, probably for the same reason we tied bricks to the ropes from the ger's roof flap.

Phase V: Insulating the Door

The last addition to my winter ger was insulation for the door itself. This consisted of a sheet of felt, inside a pretty-looking cloth cover decorated with a traditional knot design. Hashaa dad set this up against the front of the door and secured it with some wooden strips nailed into the door through the cover. The sheet is bigger than the door itself, so it also covers the spaces between the door and the door frame.

Now my ger is all set for winter!

In the Temple of the Nose

2011-12-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

In the interest of reporting events that are long overdue, in late September I went to Хамарын Хийд (Hamariin Hiid) with the teachers from my school. Hamariid Hiid, which means "The Temple of the Nose," is a religious complex located in the sands of Дорноговь аймаг (Dornogovi aimag), which means "Eastern Gobi (desert) province." Apparently it's a tradition of our school to visit this place. When the subject was broached to me, I was initially hesitant because I needed Peace Corps approval to travel, and I was sick. But the teachers convinced me that everyone else was going, and I would be alone in my village for several days, and starve to death. And then Peace Corps approved the trip because it was "work-related," so I went.

To get there we had to drive to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, then take a 10-hour train ride southeast into the Gobi Desert. Almost all of the traveling occurred at night, which meant that I was poorly rested the whole time. From the train station we hired some vans out to a ger camp. I only slept for a couple of hours before we were awoken and driven to a hilltop where we watched the sun rise.

Hamariin Hiid sunrise

Another part of the temple viewed from a distance from the hilltop

Once the sun rose, the pilgrims began walking around two stone mounds on the hilltop, splashing milk on them.

Then we got into the vans and left. For a second I was deeply disappointed, believing that this was the entire site, and that I had paid all that travel fare and lost all that sleep simply in order to watch the sun rise from a different hill. But we disembarked not at the ger camp, but by a large bronze bell. This bell has many inscriptions on it, in Cyrillic...

...in traditional Mongolian script...

...in non-linguistic imagery...

...and in Tibetan. Because Mongolians follow Lamaist Buddhism, which was imported from Tibet, almost all religious literature is in Tibetan. Tibetan inscriptions are found all over icons and temples, and monastic education - which was the only form of higher education prior to the 20th century - was conducted in Tibetan. I've barely learned Mongolian, and now I want to be able to read the Tibetan inscriptions too!

The First Temple

After the bell we went to an open-air temple further away. It consisted of a large open square framed by some sort of small minaret (ubiquitous on Mongolian temples), with a mysterious-looking building in front, an ovoo in the back, and two large gravel circles in the center.

Approaching the temple

A minaret-like thing that I see at every temple

The temple in front, looking vaguely Masonic or something

I began to question why the most salient feature of a temple named "The Temple of the Nose" was an image of a face with no nose. If I understand the explanation, it may be named not after a literal nose, but after the middle level of a mountain, which is also called a nose, and upon which some of this complex is located.

After this, my camera ran out of batteries and all the remaining pictures are on my phone. So there aren't any more pictures in this post.

In the center of the open space are two large circles made of gravel. After taking the guided tour and performing ritual gestures, and praying at the ovoo, everybody lay down on the gravel to absorb "energy" (энерги). Due to the use of a recent Russian loanword instead of, say a native or Tibetan word, I'm wondering if the "energy absorption" is a modern notion. Then we went back to the ovoo, where people sang a song.

The Caves

Nearby are some small cliffs into which caves have been carved by generations of hermit monks. They exist now as objects of veneration by the Buddhist faithful, who crawl into the small rocky holes to bow and and make offerings. 100 or 200 төгрөг / tögrög ($0.07-0.15) is a standard amount. Atop one of the cliffs is another ovoo, and behind that is a slope back down into another ravine. This passes under a natural stone arch. We all walked down the slope through the arch in a long line holding hands. When you pass through the arch you are supposed to become a new person. At the bottom you're supposed to rub your exposed skin (like, on your back) against the rock surface to absorb energy from it. At that point one of the school cooks saw a snake in a bush, and everybody gathered to watch it. Some of them tried to get it to slither in our direction while the original woman knelt, chanted, and moved her outstretched palms in a circular motion that looked like praying. I was told snakes are good luck and Mongolians love them.

Petrified Trees

Then there was a spot further off where some petrified logs lie on the ground.

The Theatre

In another empty spot was a stone commemorating the establishment of the first theatre company in Mongolia.

The Other Big Temple

There was one more large temple (separate from the first one). This one featured a long walkway up to a walled, roofed, enclosed temple. All of the walls inside were decorated with very intricate bas-reliefs of Buddhist deities. Just as in Japan, the entrance had prayer wheels that you spin as you go in.

The Wishing Mountain

Our final stop was a mountain halfway back to the aimag center. Known as the "Wishing Mountain" (no, I don't remember the Mongolian word, it was explained to me in English), this protuberance of the earth's crust is famous for appeasing the desires of men. Men is the key word, because women are not allowed all the way up the mountain. Men can climb the mountain and when they reach the ovoo at the top, after observing the necessary ceremony, think of a wish and shout off the top of the mountain. So the men in our group, leaving the women (who comprised over 2/3 of our party) behind, followed tradition up the mountain. And proceeded to drink vodka. Even though I only sipped, the sheer number of people offering me vodka was enough to make me tipsy. And being tipsy on the top off the mountain is not good. Fortunately I didn't roll off and die. I did get a fantastic aerial view of the Gobi, which you can't see, because my camera had no batteries.

Conclusion

After that we took the train back to UB and a car back to site.

MWW 6: овоо

2011-12-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

Cyrillic	овоо
Transcription	ovoo
IPA	[ɔ.’wɔ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	aw-WAW
Translation	sacred pile of stones
In Genghis Khan’s time it was obuγa.

Every language has certain unique words which have no simple one-word translation but which are of deep cultural importance in the language they belong. Ovoo is one of those uniquely Mongolian words. It is what an American observer would describe as "a pile of rocks." But it's not just any pile, it's a particular kind of pile with a particular purpose, and the English phrase doesn't give a clue as to why Mongolian would need a special word for it.

Ovoos are sort of like the stone monoliths you find in Europe - the oldest monuments in Mongolia, dating to well before writing or the introduction of Buddhism, and having no historical builders. They mark a sacred spot, usually on mountains or other elevated ground. Although they can be venerated individually by people, shamans also perform ceremonies by them. In succeeding centuries Buddhism claimed some ovoos for various Boddhisattvas, and in the Soviet era ovoo rituals were banned, but with the fall of socialism, they have reemerged.

My sum has two ovoos that I know of. One, in the northeast part of town, is the place where cars wait to pick up passengers. Then on the hill behind my town is Хайрны овоо, or "the love ovoo," where people pray for success in love.

People may pay their respects at an ovoo before setting out on a journey, or on any other occasion where they feel it necessary. First walk three times around the ovoo in a clockwise direction, perhaps repeating a formula. Then put another stone (or three stones) on the ovoo. It's also good to make an offering by pouring milk or alcohol on it, putting money on it, or tying a хадаг to it.

An ovoo along the road between Darhan and Sühbaatar

IST

2011-12-11T04:45:00.000-08:00

So, the TEFL volunteers are passing through the city and out to some swanky resort for a few days of In-Service Training. This should afford me many opportunities to shop and use the internet!

MWW 5: боов

2011-11-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

boov

[bɔ:w] or [bɔ:v]

BOVE

“fried pastry”

Boov is a very characteristic part of the Mongolian diet which you can find in any tiny little store, or which is made at home. In fact, it’s one of the few things that I can always find at the store (unlike eggs or baking soda). In its standard form it’s simply a piece of dough, fried. But it gets applied to all sorts of things which we might call cookies, or donuts, or might not have a word for.

This is your typical home-made boov, which will be offered to you if you visit a Mongolian house or ger.

This thing was almost as long as my forearm. It is known as улын боов. It was hard, and had a sort of greasy, cheesy taste. People make pyramids of this stuff for weddings. I found some examples of this here and here.

This is a еэвэн нарийн боов made by Stimo. It's basically a shortbread cookie. I buy a bag of these a week and eat them for breakfast because I'm too tired and cold to do anything other than start a fire, which usually takes most of the time I allot between waking up and going to work.

I don't know what the special name for this is, but the school kitchen bakes them and they're really good. They're made with risen dough and are soft and chewy inside, and taste pretty much like a donut without glaze. Whenever the school bakes them, I take some. Cats also go crazy for them.

Boov is also known as боорцог (boortsog). It’s convenient that there is another word for it, because boov has another meaning. Whether by coincidence or metaphorical extension, boov is also a slang term for the most conspicuous part of the male anatomy.

So when I walked into the teacher’s lounge one day and saw the улын боов above for the first time, I exclaimed,

Whoa, маш том боов!

(Whoa, mash tom boov!)

which could mean either, “Whoa, really big fried pastry” or “Whoa, really big penis.” You can imagine what the reaction of the faculty was.

Хүйтэн болсон шүү

2011-11-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

My gate through the seasons...

...late August...

...mid October...

...and mid November

During the summer it was so hot that it remined me of SoCal, and one would be inclined to doubt the persistent rumors of winter’s severity. The only exceptions were rainy days, when we would get strong winds from the north and east and the temperature would drop as much as 20 degrees. I remember a few nights sitting in my second-story room with only my underwear on at 10:00 waiting to cool off enough to fall asleep. But slowly, things began to change.

September dawned warm and bright, different from August only in that the heat was pleasant rather than uncomfortable. The first sign was on September 7, when I got up to do my business in the middle of the night and noticed there was a thin layer of ice on the handle of the outhouse door. Sure enough, in the morning the dew that normally accumulates on grass had frozen. We would continue to get frost most mornings for a while. At the same time the grass began dying and turned brown. When the greyish blue frost covered it though, it would produce an attractive contrast of silver and gold, replacing the thick green we’d acquired by the end of the August rains.

Frost on lumber

Frost on the ground

Frost on grass

On September 10, my hashaa people decided to start “winterizing” my ger. Looking at the blazing sun, I questioned whether this was necessary. We worked up a sweat too. Mongolians have a subconscious awareness of these things though, because two days later came the second sign of the Arctic apocalypse. On September 12, it snowed. By September 14 it had started melting, and it was all gone within a week.

Nights would be cold, but the days would be sunny and fairly warm. The mornings, of course, would be cold, but once you opened the ger flap, or walked outside, the sun would be there to crown you with warmth. As soon as the sun set it would get cold quickly. But the days were nearly ideal, probably hovering in the 70s. There wasn’t too much wind. In California I was sick and tired of the sun because every time it came out I knew it would be another hot, sweaty, yucky summer day. But now when the sun smiled at me, I smiled back. This lasted until well into October.

Nothing very dramatic happened, but the Earth was ever so slowly tilting and working changes across the land. The sunset declined to about 5:45, or about 4 ½ hours earlier than its peak in June. Similarly, the sunrise rose from about 4 AM to 7:30 AM. The angle of the sun also declined, and the light cast into my ger through the roof climbed up the wall. I got good at starting fires, then began to build fires every night. Insects faded out of consciousness. Snow fell again on Sept. 27, and again persisted in patches for about a week. For a minute things went backwards and on Oct. 10 and 11 we got rain. But it snowed yet again on Oct. 21.

While the temperature had been freezing or below at night for over a month, about this time, it began to shift below that point in the daylight as well. Winter began to lose its novelty and became more annoying.

The Oct. 21 snow that was in the permanent shadows on the north side of buildings never melted.

Snow can be melted and boiled to supplement your well water.

On Oct. 22 I hung clothes up to dry outside. At 5:30 when the sun began to set, my shirt wasn’t dry. It had begun to stiffen.

Around Halloween I started to have trouble keeping my feet warm at night. I would wake up in the night with uncomfortably cold feet. This stopped after I started sleeping with my Peace Corps-issued sleeping bag under the covers.

On Nov. 3, I noticed that I could see my breath at 1:25 PM while walking outside on a bright day. By this point, I was making a fire in the morning and at night, and sometimes in the evening. I started thinking about getting thermometers for inside and outside my ger.

On Nov. 8 I left the cat’s water bowl outside in the afternoon. When I brought it back inside at 7:20, almost 2 hours after sunset, there was a layer of ice on top which was thin enough to penetrate with my index finger.

On Nov. 10, 2 hours after improving my ping, snow began to fall.

On Nov. 16, after 5 days in the aimag center, I returned home at night to find thick ice in my water container and water filter, which I would slowly thaw over the next day. It snowed that day, and none of the snow has melted, except on the edges of metal roofs that face the sun.

Layer of ice in my water container

Clothes hung out to dry "steam" just like your breath.

On Nov. 17, I boiled some water at night my water-boiler-thingy (looks like a coffee carafe). On Nov. 18, I awoke to find slush forming in that boiler. I put my tumpen outside, and about 3 hours later, in the middle of the day, the water left in it had frozen. While chopping wood in the afternoon, mucus inside my nose froze and frost formed on my mustache. The cat’s water bowl froze, this time inside the ger. Since that day, any shallow standing water inside my ger turns to slush or thin ice overnight.

On Nov. 22, I discovered that by morning my arm had gotten cold through two shirts, two blankets, and a quilt. My legs were fine, because I left my winter coat at the foot of my bed. Time to put more stuff on my bed.

In the process, I have discovered that unlike rain, which dripped from the edges of my ger, snow drips from the center, because it accumulates most on the top, then I discovered that it doesn’t matter, because the snow never melts anymore unless it’s right next to the chimney. My wood gets delivered to me as whole trunks, and if I saw and chop one of them up, it can suffice to heat my ger for 5 days. The current signal for when I should build another fire is when I can see my breath inside my ger. I went from wearing a thermal underwear under my pants to wearing thermal underwear plus my pajamas under my pants. Mongolians have also told me that “It doesn’t get really cold until the end of December.” So, I’d better do some winter shopping! First things on my list are felt-lined pants and another quilt.

The snow still looks awfully pretty though.

MWW 4: цай

2011-09-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

tsai

[tsæ:]

TSA

“tea; meal”

In Chinggis Khaan’s time, it was called čai.

Here you go! You get two words this time to make up a little.

Mongolians drink lots of tea. I usually drink it at every meal. Usually, it comes in the form of сүүтэй цай (süütei tsai), or milk tea. However, at the school cafeteria I tend to get “brown tea” which has no added milk. Tea is especially important at breakfast, when it seems that most Mongolians have tea and nothing else. Whenever you visit someone’s house, you’ll get offered tea. Tea is so important to Mongolian’s diets that apparently they can’t conceive of a meal without tea, because sometimes they use the word цай for the entire meal as well as the tea.

Thus, although there is another word, хоол, for “meal,” “breakfast” is called өглөөний цай (öglöönii tsai, “morning tea”) and “lunch” can be either өдрийн хоол (“day meal”) or өдрийн цай (“day tea”).

Хоол goes with the verb идэх (ideh), “to eat,” and цай goes with the verb уух (uuh), “to drink.” So if you want to ask if someone ate breakfast, you say,

Өглөөний цай уусан уу?

Morning.GEN tea drink.PAST QUESTION

“Did you drink morning tea?”

and even if you only had toast and nothing liquid, you could correctly answer,

Тийм, уусан.

Yes drink.PAST

“Yes, (I) drank (it).”

Actually, this isn’t that strange. The English word meal originally meant flour or other ground-up stuff as in cornmeal, but people must have eaten so much of it that they started asking “Did you eat a meal?” assuming that the other person ate that ground-up stuff. Also in Japanese, gohan means both “meal” and “cooked rice.” (I think the same thing happened in Chinese; examples, please?)

MWW 3: говь

2011-09-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

govi

[gœw]?

GUHW

“desert”

In Chinggis Khaan’s time, it was gobi.

In Mongolian, говь refers to a desert, such as the Gobi Desert. In fact, did you notice something? The English word Gobi itself comes from this word govi. It was borrowed from Mongolian, presumably long ago when /b/ was still [b] and before it became [w]. The vowel i, like most short vowels at the end of words, isn’t actually pronounced anymore. However, it remains in the spelling (spelled with the Cyrillic “soft sign”) because it caused changes in the preceding sounds. Here it fronted the vowel! It also causes consonants to be palatalized, but I can’t really tell if [w] is palatalized here.

Also: look out for additions and corrections to the previous Words of the Day.

Swearing-In and Site Placement

2011-09-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

Peace Corps is an exercise in detachment. The first and greatest tearing away is when you leave your home, family, and country for Peace Corps. Then you get put in alphabetical groups for the purpose of room and board and generally keeping track of you. After a few days you get put into new groups, which seem to be assigned randomly for the most part, and sent off to your training site, where you are now made to live with a Mongolian family. During that time, your group gets split into lower- and higher-level Mongolian language classes. Then after 11 weeks of getting to know those fellow trainees, your host families, and Mongolian teachers well, you get moved to your site and away from everyone you’ve ever met before. And you start all over again.

Final Center Days and Swearing-In

PST wrapped up in the beginning of August, during which time we had to undergo practice with local Mongolian students, the TAP (Trainee Assessment Packet, in which we have to assess ourselves and discuss it with Peace Corps trainers), and Mongolian language testing - after which we got two days of relaxation before leaving our training sites, and coming back to the Training Center for “Final Center Days.” I was excited but also knew I’d miss my training site, my Mongolian teachers, and my fellow trainees. Goodbye, S---!

The first Final Center Day ended very dramatically with our site announcements. We went to a park where there was a giant concrete map of Mongolia on the ground. Whenever someone got their placement, they went to stand on the corresponding part of the map. I was one of the last (of 66) people to find out where I was going, and it turned out that I was going to K--- sum. The rest of Final Center Days consisted of meeting and getting to know our new coworkers. I met Enkhtuyaa, my landlady / training manager.

The last Final Center Day, Friday August 19, was the Swearing-In Ceremony, accompanied by performances of traditional Mongolian songs and dances (performed by the trainees). Of course there were speeches too. The US ambassador to Mongolia gave a speech. I was also one of 3 volunteers who had to give speeches. Swearing-in is the pivotal point: prior to that, we were merely “trainees;” now we are called “Peace Corps Volunteers” (Энх Тайвны Корпусын Сайн Дурын Ажилтан).

That realization lasted a moment before we had to grab our stuff and leave. The dozen or so people that were staying nearby in Bulgan, Orkhon, and Selenge Provinces, or Darkhan itself, would be sent directly to their sites. The rest of us would be bused to the capital, Ulaanbaatar (UB) before being dispersed to our sites.

I was in UB for about 3 days, from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. In UB, we had bureaucratic issues to take care of. We were also supposed to shop for whatever we couldn’t find at site, whatever that was - I only knew that it probably included most things I could think of. I also went to a small show by the Mongolian band Altan Urag.

On Monday August 22, I left for K--- in a car driven by Munkhjargal, the school’s social worker, with his wife, Enkhtuyaa, the training manager, who were also going to be my landlords. The trip took most of the day, mostly because we stopped several times. During one of these stops, I had my first taste of airag: Mongolia’s national beverage, an alcoholic drink made from horse milk. It tasted a bit like very watery unflavored yogurt. In all, we probably drove about 4 hours along one of Mongolia’s few paved highways. Mongolia doesn’t have a highway system that connects every part of the country. Some people had to fly to their sites; driving would have taken days. Most of the way, we saw only grass and hills, with a few random homes along the side of the road. The last hour or so of driving was along a dirt road which led to my site. My town doesn’t have any paved roads.

K---

When I arrived, I was greeted by Ouynbileg, an English teacher at my school, who is what Peace Corps calls my “Counterpart.” She and my landlords welcomed me to my new home:

My new home is a ger. It’s about 16 feet in diameter and 8 feet high in the center. It comes with a bed, tables, shelves, cupboards, an oven, a stove, a dry sink, and two cats. I inherited these cats from the previous PCV. One is called Amrag, meaning “lover.” The other cat is called Öör Muur, which means “the other cat.” Both of them quickly attached themselves to me. They hang around the ger all day, usually sleep inside it, and beg for food. The Other Cat also sits on my lap when I sit down, and follows me when I walk, and runs into my leg when I stop walking.

My training site, S--- was near the Russian border and surrounded by woods. My site is on the steppe, with almost no trees, and near the center of the country. This means it’s also nearly in the center of the continent, and about as far away as I can possibly get from the ocean anywhere in the world. This village (in Mongolian, sum) has about 3000 people, most of whom live in the countryside herding sheep and goats. Several hundred people live in the sum center, where the school, the hospital, the government buildings (and I) are located. I can walk around the entire village area in a couple of hours. I can also see the entire place from a large hill behind the school. Despite what Peace Corps’ information packet said, there is no internet access. To use the internet, I take an hour-long ride to a bigger, nearby sum. There also isn’t much you can buy here, even if you simply want groceries. To do that, again, you go to the next town. There are no foreigners here, other than me.

I have a great view of the sky, though!

On the first night, we got a windstorm, and Munkhjargal came in and showed me how to take down the stovepipe and close the flap covering the top of my ger. That week, we also got several rain showers. Gers are made of canvas and felt, which are not completely waterproof, so they inside gets damp. Don’t put your electronics near the wall. I don’t think I need to worry much about rain anymore though. We’ve already gotten snow, and it’s not going to get warmer. I’ll have to devote another entry to that process.

MWW 2: баяр

2011-07-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

At this point, it's more like Mongolian word of the month, but...

баяр
bayar
[ba.jər]
Rough English pronunciation: BAH-yer

"joy," "happiness"

In Genghis Khan’s time it was called bayar.

It's very popular as a part of names, or a name by itself. The word for "happy" also doubles as a greeting, and I'm sure баяр also underlies the word for "thank you." By extension, it refers to a happy occasion, like a feast.

Энхбаяр
Enkhbayar (former prime minister and president of Mongolia)

Би баяртай байна.
"I am happy."

Би баяртай.
"I’m happy."

Баяртай!
"Goodbye!"

Баярлалаа!
[ba.jər.ɬa:] or [baj.tɬa]?
"Thank you!"

төрсөн өдрийн баяр
"birthday party"

Төрсөн өдрийн баяр хүргээ!
"Happy birthday!"

PST: Part II

2011-07-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

Climate

Despite being next to one of the world’s most famously cold and barren regions, I’m not cold. Actually, I’m hot.

I had read that temperatures average in the 70s during the summer, which sounded pleasant enough. This is true but misleading. The key word is average. The reason temperatures average in the 70s is not because most days are in the 70s (they aren’t), but rather because they fluctuate between very hot and cold.

The heat isn’t surprising. When the sky is clear, the land gets more than enough sunshine, because the sun doesn’t set until after 10PM, and rises about 4AM.

The rainy season in Mongolia, especially in the north where I am, is during the summer, and when it finally started to cloud over and drizzle after I had been there a week or two, I was very pleased, because the temperature dropped quickly.

The rain has generally gotten more intense each time it’s come, with the temperatures swinging downward. Two days in particular were cold and wet; one was the day of our local Naadam, on July 6. (Mongolia’s nationwide Naadam sports festival is from July 11-14, but many towns celebrate local Naadams before that. Like a tournament, winners from the local Naadams often get sent to the national Naadam, such as Kari’s host dad, who kicked everyone’s butt in archery.) A few days before our Naadam I was sweating in my dress shirt. On Naadam, I was wearing four shirts and still a little cold. Plus, it was raining, although it mostly just spit.

Sometimes the sky is completely empty, sometimes it’s impenetrably cloudy, for the most part there are some clouds floating here and there. Usually there’s not much of a breeze, but the clouds float slowly from west to east, so there must be a high-altitude west wind. That would be normal in the middle latitudes. Since that would be coming from the center of the Asian landmass, naturally it brings warm, dry weather. However, before our biggest rainy days, the normal rhythm of the skies was interrupted by a very strong, cold north wind, which could be felt at ground level. Obviously these storms must be coming in from Siberia, perhaps because of an intrusion of the polar air mass. During Naadam I noticed the wind change back to west-east, so I guessed the weather would clear up. Indeed, the next day it did. And after 24 hours, it was in the 80s again.

Allegedly one of the teachers said that the wind usually blows from the west for a week, and then for a week it reverses, bringing rain. If we have wet east winds, it must be because they’re carrying air all the way from the Pacific Ocean, and it may even have something to do with the monsoon.

They try so hard to warn you about the country being cold, to prepare you for being cold during the winter, that they fail to warn you that it will be very hot during the summer too. It was for the first week I was in S----.

I had been so busy trying to prepare for the Mongolian winter that I failed to prepare for the summer, so I didn’t bring shorts, sandals, or anything else suited for the heat. (I didn’t bring anything for the rain either, but my parents sent me a package with an umbrella in it - Thanks!) So if you’re packing for Mongolia now, bring shorts. The small town where you get sent for training won’t have a clothing store, and you won’t be able to leave the town without official permission from Peace Corps, which usually means bringing a member of your host family with you.

You might also consider taking swim trunks and pool shoes in case you live near a river, like I do. When it gets hot, you’ll enjoy jumping in the river, and it will be more convenient and less constraining than a bath in a tumpen. However, the Peace Corps Medical Officers like you to wade with shoes on, to avoid cutting your foot on a beer bottle someone threw in the river and getting an infection from the bacteria swimming around.

Daily Life

Our weekdays are as full as any school. Monday through Thursday we have language classes from 9 AM to 1 PM, go home for lunch until 2:30, then have technical training (TEFL and community development classes) until 5:30. On Friday we just have the language classes. S--- is divided into two parts, “Uptown” and “Downtown.” Our group is similary divided. Six of us, including me, live at the bottom of the big hill, and the other five live at the top of the hill. The school is also on top of the hill, so us downtowners have a 30 min. walk uphill to get to class. Since I go home to eat lunch, I spend most of the time walking, and only get about 30 minutes to eat. In total, I spend minimum 2 hours a day walking Monday through Thursday.

Naadam

Naadam is the national sports festival. It features three events: horse-racing, wrestling and archery. Since this is a Mongolian specialty, there’s lots of information in books or online about how it works. For now, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

I missed the horse race, which starts early in the morning, but I got to see parts of the wrestling and archery competitions, which went on until late in the day.

Etc…

Yesterday we killed and butchered a ram. I’ll have to talk about that later.

Mongolian Word of the Week: тэнгэр, “sky”

2011-07-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

Some people have said they wanted me to do a Mongolian word of the day. There's no way I can do this every day - maybe a Mongolian word of the week (or month) - but here it is! And why not start with the word in the title of my blog? I give you Tengri!

тэнгэр

tenger

[teŋ.gr]

Rough English pronunciation: TEN-gehr

"sky," "heaven," "God"

In Genghis Khan’s time it was called tenggeri or tngri. (http://www.linguamongolia.com/cgi-bin/searchDb3.pl?search_param=tenggeri&langselect=mongolian)

Teng(e)ri was the name of the sky, and of the nomads' God who was personified by the sky. The word is widespread among Central Asian people and is even mentioned in Chinese texts. The equivalent Turkish word is Tanrı (and yes, you’re seeing right: there isn’t a dot on that “i” and there isn’t supposed to be), and it is used as a synonym for God.

Puffballs

Now, I’d like to introduce you to a fascinating little idiomatic expression I discovered one day while preparing for a Mongolian barbecue picnic by the river. I came upon a big fairy ring of puffballs. My Mongolian teacher told me that puffballs are known as тэнгэрийн дүлий (tengeriin dülii). That’s tenger in the genitive case plus dülii, “deaf.” This name could be literally translated into English as “The Deafness of Heaven.” Why would they call it that? Nobody could tell me. It sounds kind of sad, yet poetic, doesn’t it?

Anybody who can find an explanation for this name wins my gratitude!

Training

2011-07-02T23:09:00.000-07:00

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!

I'm alive

2011-06-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not dead, I'm just in training! I'm in Mongolia now. Our days are pretty full and I've spent most of the little free time with the other trainees or taking care of other physically/bureaucratically necessary matters, and my internet access is limited anyway. Soon we'll be heading off to live with our host families for the rest of PST (Pre-Service Training, we have a lot of acronyms). Hopefully, I'll have more chances to use the internet and update my stuff.

Fun Facts About Mongolia

2011-05-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

If you were going to move to another country, you'd want to find out everything about it. I did, and I'd like to share some of the interesting little fact(oid)s I've found about Mongolia.

Mongolia is the 19th-largest country in the world.
Mongolia is the 2nd-largest landlocked country in the world (after Kazakhstan). Before Kazakhstan became independent, Mongolia was THE largest landlocked country.
Mongolia is bordered by 2 countries: Russia (the Siberian part) in the north, and China (the desert part) on all the other sides.
Western Mongolia contains the furthest point away from the ocean of any point of land in the world.
Mongolia has the lowest population density of any independent country (about 4 people per square mile).
But it has 81 airports.
Mongolia's capital, Ulaan Baatar, has the lowest average temperature of any world capital (it averages below freezing for 8 months of the year).
Mongolia has on average 257 cloudless days a year (which doesn't sound that different from Southern California).
The lake Khövsgöl Nuur contains 2% of the world's fresh water.
Mongolia has snow leopards, wild gazelles, reindeer, the world's only REAL wild horses (i.e., not just feral), and some elusive thing called "the Gobi bear."
Cows, sheep, goats, horses, yaks, and camels outnumber people almost 30 to 1.
Mongolia was the world's second communist country (after Russia).
More women than men go to college there.
As much as 8% of the men in Asia (2% worldwide) are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
In Genghis Khan's time, urinating in water was punishable by death.
In 2010, the tögrög was the best-performing currency world-wide.
Rumors are circulating that the country will open its first McDonald's and Starbucks this year.

Feelings Going into Mongolia

2011-05-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

When I was invited to Mongolia at the end of February, I was surprised because Mongolia wasn't a country I'd been nominated for, and I was uncertain of what to expect. I didn't know anything about Mongolia except what I learned for a report I wrote about Genghis Khan years ago. Immediately after accepting it was a rush to get the passport forms and other urgent paperwork in. But the more I read about Mongolia, the more excited I got, until I really couldn't imagine getting invited to any other country. It was all good for two whole months, with only a couple of moments of worry that something could happen before June - some sudden illness or injury or something. One of my friends was all set to enter the Marines in March when he sprained his ankle and boot camp got put off a month. If that happened to me, well, I'd already become endeared to Mongolia even though I'd never been there!

But in early May, even though I was still excited, the anxiety really stepped up. One day I went to the store and while walking down a random aisle, I suddenly stopped, got butterflies in my stomach, and just thought, "Holy ****! Mongolia! June 2nd!" It wasn't a panic attack, but it was just like it had all suddenly "hit" me. Most of the time the future creeps onward at a steady pace, but at that moment it was rushing down on top of me. Since then almost every day I've had one moment where I just stopped whatever I was doing, got this feeling like I'd had too much coffee, and inwardly screamed "Mongolia!"

Not to sound morbid, but I think of it as like a little death. In the case of death you have to make the most of your time alive - think seriously about what you want to do, and do it - because you're going away for a long time and you can't take anything with you. I have to make the most of my time in America, because I'm going away for a long time and I can't take much with me. I want every minute to be the most memorable, emotional minute ever. Now, I've also gotten frustrated because I feel like I've wasted all of the free time I've had for the last couple of years of under-employment, and that I've got to live two years in two weeks. Of course overall, my outlook has been positive. Major life changes bring every kind of emotion, don't they?

Сайн байна уу!

2011-05-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

Сайн байна уу (Hello), I'm Andrew and I am a soon-to-be Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. I finally have a blog to share what I hope to be many irreplaceable experiences in Mongolia. So, how about starting off with an explanation of my blog's name?

It took me forever to find a good name for this thing, as most of the cool, clever names have been taken in some way or other, but it came down to The Road to Xanadu and my friend Carlos's suggestion, Eye of Tengri. Xanadu, of course, is the name commonly given to the capital city of Khublai Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson and one of the rulers of the Mongol empire. Although I don't think the exact title The Road to Xanadu has been taken on blogspot, there are books with the name, and plenty of stuff on the net that has to do with Xanadu. Obviously Eye of Tengri won. Tengri means "sky," "heaven," and "God." The lord of the skies, Tengri was the spiritual center of the world for the nomadic people of Asia. His name is found in languages all over Asia. In Modern Mongolian it's тенгер (tenger). As he personifies the sky, Tengri is said to have two eyes, the sun and the moon. Because Mongolia is known as the "Land of the Eternal Blue Sky" where the weather is clear and the land is open, everything is always under the eyes of God.