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.
