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.
Showing posts with label training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label training. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
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!
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!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
I'm alive
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.
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